Comment by jonbronson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonbronson | Hacker News Reader

While there are a lot of truths in this article, there's also a thread of misconception running through it, embodied most prominently in the line "Without some ownership of one’s feelings and thoughts, it is difficult to take responsibility for them."

Mindfulness is about creating space between you and your thoughts, not ignoring or discounting them. It allows you to look at them subjectively, rather than being carried away by them. This in no way prohibits you from being introspective, and analyzing the origin of these feelings/thoughts. If anything, it empowers the individual to more rationally grapple with them, without falling into the various psychological traps that often come with certain feelings, such as rumination or avoidance. And whether or not we believe that there is a self, this is no way invalidates the reality that your thoughts ultimately reside inside the mind of a human being, with a real world story. It's unclear to me why the author does not recognize this duality. Most of the literature on mindfulness I've read, including Jon Kabat Zinn's, explicitly mention this duality and its power.

Exactly the definition of mindfulness is literally being aware of your mental state.

If being carried away by emotions is like being lost than mindfulness is developing a good sense of direction. And mindfulness meditation is the practice through which one develops this skill.

The tcpdump of the brain.

More like setting a set of mental breakpoints on critical actions, so when they run you can stop and analyze the situation before going any further.

> allows you to look at them subjectively

I think you meant, "objectively"?

yes indeed!

well, you still look at them subjectively ... just maybe more objectively.

You don’t by chance program Haskell, do you?

Right. Living mindfully simply means that I'm aware of my gestures, words and actions. A good meditation does just that. For this awareness to remain at all times with you, a certain sense of detachment is inevitable but that doesn't imply that you are no longer supposed to care about what's going inside you. IN fact it should be opposite; once you're aware of content of your mind, you need to do cleansing to rise above conditioning that binds you [0].

0: In Mind Full to Mindful (book on Zen/mindful meditation https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Full-Mindful-Wisdom-Monks-ebook/... ) Om Swami has given a method to do Emotional Hygiene and Cleansing (Osoji). It is about emptying the baggage we carry in our minds. Believing Zen, if everything is empty, we may as well realize that essence in practice and not think of it merely as a philosophical proposition.

Spot on. In my case, mindfulness practice (at the moment with the Waking Up app from Sam Harris) has transformed my life in three short months. I thought I was insightful and deep before, yet was a victim of ephemeral thoughts and emotions far more than I realized.

At no time have I given myself a pass or shirked responsibility in the way the article implies...rather, mindfulness practice has given me the time and quiet to turn these thoughts around, examining them and their source.

I can't express in words how much I feel I've gained from practicing, and I encourage each of you to do so. While I still can't say I always look forward to it, I'm always glad after the fact to feel it's affects. If everyone practiced mindfulness, the world would be a FAR better place...

The problem with the mindfulness approach is that it only leads you knee-deep. Enough to enjoy the waves and the joy of water, but too little to start swimming.

For example, I can still see you are not accepting your past self for what it is ("I thought I was insightful and deep before") or how the world is ("would be a FAR better place").

You are on a path towards awakening. Some of us have come to understand that there are seven factors [1] to master, not one.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Factors_of_Awakening

I think this is actually the exact problem the article talks about.

It’s possible to engage with mindfulness practices without buying into the entire Buddhist belief system.

This comment reinforces the author’s (I believe mistaken) point, that mindfulness sneaks in a bunch of Buddhist ideology. In my experience, it’s been possible to benefit from the practices while deciding some of the more doctrinal Buddhist beliefs (like non-self / anatta) don’t resonate.

Well, the problem is rather simple. If you decide to only engage in mindfulness, you'll have a great time discovering things about yourself and your environment. You will feel better about yourself. That will work for a while and it might set you on a larger, longer path with more peril.

In (Mahayana) Buddhism you train more. Like the opposite: concentration. Think about the same topic for one hour, repeatedly. Who am I? Who do I think I am? What thoughts am I suppressing?

Fundamentally, it teaches you that all these things are like sliders on a big mixing console. Pushing one slider will bring the others down. Pushing mindfulness might reduce equanimity and concentration.

In the end, it is the art of letting go. If you want to hold on to something, you should be able to let it go.

But if you don’t have Buddhist beliefs then there is no problem.

> I think this is actually the exact problem the article talks about.

The article doesn't make it explicit, but I think that you have it backwards: the problem is that mindfulness is divorced from the Buddhist tradition. As an analogy, it's like the spread of corn as a staple without nixtamalization [1]. I.e. the surrounding context that Buddhism provides with other supporting and subsequent practices makes it more "stable".

[1] In the United States, European settlers did not always adopt the nixtamalization process, except in the case of hominy grits, though maize became a staple among the poor of the southern states. This led to endemic pellagra in poor populations throughout the southern US in the early 20th century https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization

Precisely, thank you for making this point

Now that Buddhists like you are coming in here and telling us to be more Buddhist and read and think Buddhist things, I think it's important to stress that anyone interested in mindfulness doesn't need to become a Buddhist.

In fact there is a clinical application of mindfulness which is called cognitive behavioral therapy, it is proven through research to have great benefits for a lot of people, it is secular, and unlike Buddhism, it has never been a justification for murder and ethnic cleansing.

We should strip away the religion and focus on the scientifically studied and observed benefits, in my opinion.

I've done mindfulness and am ongoing CBT therapy and saying they are related is kind of wrong.

Both:

1. Are a method that aim to reduce suffering

2. Focus on habits and

3. Observation of the current self

But they are really not the same, or related on a practical level.

Mindfulness is practiced in any religion. Though, most churches will for political reasons push back anything bringing in too much mysticism and spirituality. That's why the content of many religious books outside of institutional restrictions are more or less interchangeable.

CBT isn’t mindfulness. DBT is the one that incorporates mindfulness. CBT is specific analysis and can say it has mindfulness as part of it just as any introspection or analysis pertaining to your self does.

It was not my intent to convert anyone to Buddhism (in any of it’s hundreds of mostly peaceful substreams). I am merely pointing out that mindfulness requires a wider context.

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