Lost in Thought: Psychological Risks of Meditation
harpers.org
harpers.org
Meditation is definitely not relaxation. In the language of Yoga (which meditative traditions share), long meditation sessions move the focus (prana) to certains parts of the body where long sustained focus can create "imbalances" and lead to breaks and other side effects (psychosis or related). Further description risks going into woo-woo land without a shared language.
Meditation carries with it the most definite risk of people experiencing a break. I would put the at-risk population in the low-to-mid single digits. I have seen folks go into long meditation retreats and experience breaks where they have an experience much like Megan in the article - they have to be admitted and most of them are never the same ever after. Very solid grounded people develop migraines, insomnia, loss of appetite, or start hallucinating.
Meditation and Pranayama are both neither innocuous nor mere placebo effects. There is a very strong mechanism at work which we do not understand in a modern scientific context. However, the majority of practitioners do not do long intense retreats and will get away without any serious consequences.
A good tradition will devote serious time on how to combat the effects of long meditation retreats. They will talk about it almost as much as the technique itself. The biggest antidotes are - getting good sleep, not overdoing it, physical exercise, long walks and getting enough food. The inversion - onset of insomnia or anxiety or loss of appetite - is a very bad sign and you should stop meditating immediately.
Please do not do take either practice lightly or you could risk effing up something internally for which we have no cure. Feel free to DM me if you want to chat more.
Can you share what happened to them?
Also, you mentioned 3 week retreats. Can you share what changes (good or bad) you experienced during these long retreats?
Meditation is a blade with no hilt.
I _accidentally_ fell into a vipassana state of mind after the first time trying a particular religious chant, seriously, from out of the pains of boredom as a 20 year old.
At the time I lived nearby mountains, and after 'coming to', I saw them through the window. I cannot describe to you the overwhelming feeling of beauty and awe that crashed over me. It was as though this was the very first time I had ever seen mountains. I think the best description I can manage comes from 'Both Sides Now' by Joni Mitchell.
'I've looked at clouds from both sides now From up and down, and still somehow It's cloud illusions I recall I really don't know clouds at all'
The experience was so disorienting. As if I was seeing the mountains for what they were directly through my senses and not mediated by my knowledge of what mountains were like, linguistically.
It changed my entire life -- weeks later later I lost my job and fell into a 5 year extreme depression / anxiety spell in the attempt to reconcile my adolescent religious upbringing with the continued insight from that experience. Absolutely worthwhile, in hindsight, but it cost me near everything for it.
That very moment I was hit by a realisation that I still - years later - can't really put into the appropriate words. It felt like a veil suddenly lifted. The world exposed itself in all its complexity and aesthetic beauty. The integration and the interdependence of all things was suddenly visible to me without any mental filters. The abstractions were gone. The semiotics were gone. The dualism was gone.
It felt like I suddenly and violently woke up from a deep slumber.
There was this strong realisation that I was deeply embedded in the universe. The leaves blowing in the wind, the snail, the pebbles on the trail, the grass, the sky, the universe and myself in it were just one thing. I felt like I was suspended in the very "beingness" of it all.
Back then, I had no means to integrate this existential experience into everyday life. The giant question marks it raised stuck with me over the years. Intense meditation practise can create very powerful shifts in perception of reality. In hindsight, I believe that I was way too inexperienced to wield the powerful tool that is meditation. I stopped meditation practice for a few years after this experience. I felt that I ventured too far offshore. I suddenly realised how deep and unexplored the ocean that is perception are, once we swim out of the shallow water. Back then, I decided to quickly swim back to shore and stopped my meditation practice for a few years.
I've rekindled my meditation praxis with the same sangha a few years later. But I stayed vigilant to not venture too fast too far out into unexplored territories of perception.
This causes the emotion to ferment underneath that layer, and since it's prevented from venting itself, the person sometimes emotionally deforms more and everything becomes harder to solve.
Part because person is blind to what's happening and has a very powerful defensive layer which prevents everyone (including psychiatrists) reaching from problematic emotions and trying to heal them.
Every emotion/trauma affects you and these effects manifest somehow. These effects are self-regulated via feedbacks like "I feel X", "I'm not feeling OK", "Hey, this makes me happy" or "Why do I feel like that", etc.
Ignoring an emotion's or secondary effect's presence removes the self regulation circuit hence, allows it to run amok. Since person trained him/herself to ignore these emotions or its manifestations with great effectiveness, wounds grow deeper while practitioner pretends it's OK.
At the last stage, person permanently ignores the problem and pointing to it results in violent responses from the affected person.
I've met with people these symptoms. All of them practiced or was practicing self-affirmation / self validation practices with minimal or no supervision.
Every practice, done mindlessly is dangerous. Including Zen, Yoga and others.
Sounds odd - what exact methods are you talking about?
I don't know the exact names of the methods, but they essentially train to push these bad experiences deeper and pretend that they didn't happen or affect you in the first place.
However, they both happened and affected the person. Pretending not is dangerous akin ignoring a wound with infection.
Proper meditation is a very powerful journey inside and has the power to uncover a lot of trauma or bad experiences masked or buried by other coping mechanisms. It can be said that purification is the process of uncovering these traumas and/or problems and solving them definitively, removing all secondary effects in the process, hence making person more free.
As OP said, the mechanisms are overly complex and extremely powerful. It's both not understood by modern science and very underrated by "woo woo" people.
Coming to your point, these breaks are caused by being faced with these traumas unprepared or without someone to support you. If you're advanced enough, you can face them yourself and solve them. If you're not and somehow face them, a more experienced practitioner can help you to collect yourself and face them at a later time. These experiences push you to the boundaries or out of your comfort zone, for sure.
In these cases, anxiety and other emotions are tip of the iceberg. If you're anxious about meditation, you wouldn't be able to focus properly.
In Zen, the practitioner wouldn't search for a root cause since it's not obvious. So, you don't try to process what's happening real time. These root cause reveals itself later. Either by noticing real-life changes or enlightenment (completion of background processing).
Hope that helps. If you have further questions, I'll try to answer.
If you don't mind, could you mention what practices and substances are you referring to?
Every practice regimen has a bigger system in work so, mixing and matching can create havoc on your body.
Adding LSD and mushrooms on top of it is just lighting a big fire and calling storm on you.
I'm not against LSD, mushrooms or other practice systems, but never seen any positive outcome from these kinds of experiments.
Please, don't do it.
Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind has lots of stories of people having positive psychedelic therapy, which does require essentially a spiritual guide.
I personally changed a lot with the help of the practice I do. I've faced my phobias, solved a lot of self-confidence issues, found out what's wrong with me. I've also got therapy before starting Zen. While it helped me somehow, it failed to solve the underlying issue. Zen helped me to tackle the underlying issue and move forward.
To work with a good master, you don't need to always go to a monastery and, change your life temporarily. I left nothing behind. Still live in the city. Just go to see my master from time to time. Will continue when the pandemic ends.
I had an instructor in the city, who's also a student of the same master, but he passed away due to COVID-19.
Every tradition and way contains elements from each other, but these ways find the compatible combinations and way to build upon them. Also a master/student relationship helps to guide the student in the harder times. Internet doesn't provide the guidance and safeguards, unfortunately.
As an instructor, I keep track of my every student independently. Otherwise, there's no meaning doing what I do. They also call me when things go awry and we work through it together, and we both learn in the process.
Zen, Buddhism or anything is not the only way. There are many ways to do it.
I'm very curious on what was your main goal to achive?
Interacting with hidden layers are considered advanced practice and I'm just entering these levels. To be able to cope with it you both have to be very experienced and very powerful. I still practice with my masters if I'm going to go that deep.
Also, tests of death and dissolution is not something you should experience alone. It can be because of many different reasons. Everybody's experiences are different, even when faced with the same thing. So you need to get familiar with yourself first, under supervision of a more experienced instructor.
My advice is not to mix meditation with substances and not try deeper practices without someone more experienced on the subject matter.
My guess is, it's not understood by modern science exactly because it's underrated by "woo woo" people :( But I notice in later years an increased focus on mental studies so maybe modern science will get to this as well. That is, if it's not too busy explaining the earth is round... (*edited to reformat)
Unfortunately that can't be proved. When reading the article I got the impression the woman might have unearthed such a thing. Maybe she had a hidden shame. Someone even asked about it, but she never told what it was. Maybe there wasn't anything to work through and meditation can cause problems. We can never know when the subject is dead. We also cant know if ideas are put in someone's head when they're in such a state.
My point is that to blame hidden trauma is cop out. Blaming the victim. Sure, it's the cause sometimes, but we dont know if it's always the case.
BTW, similar risks exist in psychotherapy, but they too will deny risks and blame patients with "(s)he had issues" when they die.
The first is hidden trauma.
The second is something that comes strings attached. You have to accept the Buddhist conceptual framework which says that the entire world is a fabrication.
During meditation you can experience this and, if you don't accept that you are more than just matter, then experiencing the fact that your body is empty of existence will mean that you are empty of existence. Which will be very frightening, as you can imagine.
Hidden trauma is not something like a faceless blob. It's something you remember, you know, however you didn't realize that it created a trauma with you. It's not something burning inside daily, distorting you daily. E.g.: You don't like a certain spice. That's OK, but why? Because somebody added it to your food excessively and your first encounter was very unpleasant. You put the event in the back burner, almost forgot about it, but its effects linger until this day. This is the hidden trauma. This can be something emotional about your past partners, something you botched up, etc. So when you re-remember it, it can be easy to work through or very hard. This difficulty is not related to the size of the event. You can go through events of great distress in a single breath and need to work on the loss of a sentimental item for years. This is where instructor comes in. Keeps you in balance, and guides through it.
The meditation I do doesn't judge anyone. There's no blame. It happened and it left a mark. Why? Doesn't matter. Who's wrong? Doesn't matter. There's a little lesson there. Did you learn it? It can be about you, other party, world, your dog. Doesn't matter. Get that little message, put it into your pocket, leave the emotion behind. That's not easy all the time. This is why instructors/masters are important. This is why the way is important.
Sometimes there's nothing to go through, at least for now. In a good practice, practice itself shouldn't search for problems but to explore what's inside and strengthen oneself. This strength and self-familiarity triggers the discovery of these hidden-traumas or not-so-right state of oneself. This mechanism is not fully understood, but it can be said that with self familiarity and self confidence, the practitioner has more courage to face with the problems which he/she buried to cope, so subconscious mind surfaces them to be dealt with. This is again where guidance and masters play a very important role.
I meditate everyday. I don't uncover the hell inside me every day, but it helps me to reflect, understand what I did right, what I did wrong, what I still carry. It helped me tremendously for transforming from a potato to myself, after years of physical and emotional bullying. It helped me to get rid of my dance phobia, fear of expressing myself and lack of self confidence.
There are many wrong ways to both meditation and psychotherapy. We're very very cautious with our practitioners. Everyone benefited somehow from our ways. Most important thing is, many friends has diverted to different paths and they're free to do so. There's no strings attached. We give the tools and show how to use them correctly. If another set of tools are better for them, we're happy. No hard feelings.
>> Hidden trauma is not something like a faceless blob. It's something you remember, you know, however you didn't realize that it created a trauma with you.
Some people will block the memory. Others are aware of it but don't associate it with current feelings, thoughts, or actions, so when asked they will essentially "forget" it and say "no trauma". Yet other forms of trauma form from years of subtle mistreatment and can not be traced to a specific event - only through extensive work can that be pieced together.
The subconscious can be a minefield, and to say poor outcomes are due to poor practice is almost as bad as victim blaming. I think triage is important, but there is a lot of belief that any practitioner can handle any person. I think that's false even with the best of them.
A sudden confrontation with this can be completely destabilizing.
> A sudden confrontation with this can be completely destabilizing.
Many ways force a confrontation, and that's indeed dangerous. However, it doesn't have to be like that.
Emotions are like onions. They're layered. Slow practice and slow advancement naturally brings practitioners to outer layers of these onions, which are easier to understand, remove and resolve. In our way, you can't get to the next level unless you have the power to do so.
If you have the power, you can remove and solve it. If you can't remove that layer, you don't face with anything. It all happens progressively.
All in all, there's no forced search for battles to fight. Ours is self exploration. You face only what you're ready for. We have safeguards against it.
I'm doing this for ~7 years and I still get to harder levels of the same issues sometimes. It's not easy, but it's worth it.
I’ve also spent time with numerous different meditation groups from different traditions.
My experience is that they vary a lot.
> You face only what you're ready for. We have safeguards against it.
Your particular community may have safeguards.
That is simply not true in the general case as the linked article asserts.
When it becomes a competition or a drug or a lifestyle or an experimental therapy or hobby or social or cult activity, there are greater dangers. People should be meaningfully informed of the risks. But there is money to be made, so...
Philosophical studies and religious faith and teachings seem to smooth the way. Know thyself. Everything in moderation. To thine own self be true. The small still voice within. If it isn’t making you more kind and loving to all you meet, whatever it is, then stop. As true about meditation as anything else.
The best introduction I ever found on the topic of meditation was Introduction to Yoga Principles and Practices by Majumdar, University Books, 1964. No cult, no workshops, been dead for a while.
That seems like a tautology to me.
You are essentially saying that those who practice safely do not need safeguards.
This is true, but of course the safeguards are not for those people.
They are for people who are at risk but don’t know it.
However, I want to heavily emphasize that there's no such thing as "poor outcomes are due to poor practice" in our way. I never got that treatment from my masters or my deceased instructor. Same is valid for me. I'd never say something something similar to any of my students.
These students give us all their trust. Their wellbeing is more important than ours during practice and after that. We'd do anything in our capacity to help them, and we have preliminary response protocols if something goes wrong. This brings us to next point of you, which is equally valid.
> I think triage is important, but there is a lot of belief that any practitioner can handle any person.
That's absolutely true. If we sense something is beyond us, we direct our students to medical doctors. If there's an emergency, we directly take them there. Having knowledge of preliminary medical first aid is essential (we have them). Funny thing is, other trainer in my city is an MD. Our master was a field medic.
We neither denounce nor ignore modern medicine. We just can complement in lots of instances or teach people to help themselves. I think it's equally important to know the value and capacity of tradition and accept things evolve and advance.
It's assuring that none of students had any adverse effects or negative events in their life due to practices they made with us. If anything happens, its responsibility is on us, not them. We're showing the way, and we don't have the luxury to make mistakes.
Some are :) https://meditatewithtucker.com/about/ I'm not affiliated with Tucker, just been on retreats with him in the past. I'm sure there are other teachers out there with similar training.
As someone who has instructed meditation, our lineage has many safe guards to make it mild for the neophyte to pick up and practice safely. First off all, not by renouncing the world, but by being part of it. Second to never overdo it. Third, no more than three pranayama breaths when you start.
The yoga sutras talk about sthira and sukha, effort and ease, which should be in balance. Basically you wouldn’t send someone up mount Everest untrained. Nor is there a reason to for the layman interested in the relaxation of the mind.
The word "meditation" is used for almost everything and in different senses.
I suppose were I to subject myself to a week+ of meditation in my current state, I could conceivably "injure" myself if I were stubborn in my persistence. So maybe the warnings in this article aren't so unintuitive after all.
Would love for someone knowledgeable to contrast this form to the other forms mentioned in this thread for someone who is open minded and not a complete outsider.
The explanation might be difficult for you to accept, if you don't accept Buddhist philosophy (if you don't believe in enlightenment, basically).
If you are a materialist, you don't believe there is anything else besides matter. You are just your body.
Well, at some point during your meditation, you might experience the fact that this world is a construct, a fabrication. But if you don't know how to put it into context, it will feel like nothing, void, nonexistence. This could shock your mind-body system.
There are several ways to avoid this.
First, familiarise yourself with the Buddhist conceptual framework. Entertain the possibility that it is an accurate view of reality. The best book that I know for this is Dreams of light by Andrew Holecek.
Second, look into practices that cultivate positive mental states. Some examples are forgiveness meditation and metta meditation. A relaxed and open mind can more easily hold difficult experiences.
Third, take it slow and don't push yourself if you're having difficult experiences. Find a teacher or a community where you can ask for advice. One community that I recommend is /r/streamentry on Reddit.
I hope meditation is fruitful for you. Let me know if you have questions.
Without being arrogant or facetious this feels like a truism to me? After all, our sense of self is an emergent property of unfeeling chemical machines.
I suppose this is where philosophy of the self and ego comes into play which tends to stick people into two camps.
That said, I have yet to feel my mind wander down these paths and experiences during meditation. Although I have experienced something almost similar to psycho activity/wakeful dreaming during yoga shavasana
In any case, I may not be conveying the message properly, because I'm still trying to understand these things conceptually.
The book I mentioned does a far better job with this.
I may not be disagreeing with what you mean, but one should be careful to differentiate between concepts, that are knowable, and things they refer to, which are not¹. Lots of confusion stems from mistaking the two. From what you were taught are apples to the world or ones own self.
As an illustration, if I slap your face, you may argue it is an illusion, it may not affect your later in life, and you may not even remember it. I take it as true, that words nor imagination are no match for an actual good slap. After a slap, people may disagree whether it was a slap, they may have illusions about who, what, how or why .. yet I don't think many will argue it is an illusion in the sense that nothing in fact happened.
¹ Well, most of them anyway.
Even that conceptual framework can not describe what can't be described. It can only get you to experience again and again what can only be experienced until the moment that concepts drop off.
Sitting in half lotus or milder variations is hard for the chair accustomed person! Not to mention that lotus/half lotus can be tough, sometimes wrecking even, on the knees,hips or lowerback.
> First off all, not by renouncing the world, but by being part of it.
What is the world to me? What am I to the world? Truly, the example of this world and myself is that of a rider who seeks shade under a tree, then he moves on and leaves it behind. - Prophet Muhammad
So there are the very subtle (but quite important) distinctions made by Muhammad (SAWS) here regarding the correct meaning of "detachment" and "world" and the mental and spiritual position of the 'Completed Human' regarding these matters. (Many in their misguided and mininformed zeal about "poverty" and "detachment" forget about that comforting "shade" he mentioned. "Seek shade under a tree". Mediate on that.)
Maybe I am missing something, but Zikr sounds suspiciously like japa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japa), which is a well accepted form of concentration meditation in all Dharmic traditions. Many teachers will ask neophytes to have a regular japa practice, where you recite a mantra a certain number of times often with the help of a mAlA, first audibly, and gradually, mentally (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japa#Degrees_of_loudness). The idea being that it's easier to focus on a gross object at first to keep your mind steady, and later proceed to more subtle forms. Patanjali himself recommends that Om be chanted and its meaning reflected upon (https://www.himalayanacademy.com/saivite-scriptures/patanjal...).
The forms of meditations in dharmic traditions is quite bewildering. Patanjali himself recommends to concentrate on anything that you are comfortable with (https://www.himalayanacademy.com/saivite-scriptures/patanjal...).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhikr
So of course, Zikr is a subset of general contemplation and given the universality of human body and psyche, you will find shared elements (such as seating, lowering & raising of head/gaze, and the big one, breathing) in various methodologies of contemplation across cultures, religions, and schools. This is to be expected and is natural.
In a sense, one could possibly say that Meditation aimed towards mastering the mind, whereas Zikr aims for breaking the imaginal boundary of lower self (i.e. aims for Unity of Selves harmonized by “Names”) by being fully focused and mindful of ‘The One’. Chanting Om is quite close to the effect.
Christian monastics have written tomes about the dangers of spiritual delusion arising in the course of practice (prelest); Without getting into theological debate about core teachings between various religions, I'm quite sure the same is true for any serious spiritual/religious ascetic discipline; The tendency in our culture to divorce the practices from their philosophical underpinnings to make them more 'consumable' by the uninitiated as seems to have happened here is likely a big contributing factor in cases such as this one, and the article completely sidesteps the point by falling victim to the same thinking ..
In a similar vein I also find it quite ironic that the article attempts to reconcile 'meditation' as one monolithic topic that is either 'good' or 'bad' within scientific literature, while at the same time ignoring that 'scientific literature' itself has many studies of differing results from differing psychological treatment modalities, many of which could be viewed as 'meditative' in some casual sense (e.g. CBT, so called 'mindfulness meditation', schema therapy, etc)
I wasn't aware of this. Could you point us to some of these writings? Curious to read more about it.
(very dense theologically, and intended for actual practicing monks, fitting the topic, beware )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ladder_of_Divine_Ascent
"18–26: Avoidance of the traps of asceticism (laziness, pride, mental stagnation"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophthegmata_Patrum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philokalia
"On the Signs of Grace and Delusion, Written for the Confessor Longinos: Ten Texts"
less familiar with western christian works, though i'm sure there are some.
How can people do that if HN doesn't have DMs and you don't have any information listed on your profile?
- Someone noted downthread that meditation is dose-sensitive. This is is an incredibly useful observation. Most folks doing 30-60 mins of meditation a day are not at risk but doing an intensive weeks long retreat with 8-10hrs/day of cushion time is in a different risk bucket.
- Second, there were many objections to using meditation as a singular monolithic phenomenon vs. distinguishing between the varieties of meditative experiences. I have struggled with this in the past too. For the sake of this discussion let's define meditation as a purposeful focus on an object of meditation with the goal of single pointed absorption.
This definition is incomplete and inaccurate in measures. However I do think it encompasses a fair variety of meditative experiences. The object might be the breath, the flow of thoughts, mantras (prayer), visualizations or an analytical meditation. I include conscious breath work in this category - pranayama, wimhof - since you are consciously moving the breath/attention to create a heightened psychological state. Yogic/Vedic/Buddhist meditation practices - even Zazen - all ascribe to the state of one-pointed absorption, nay, union of the object and subject (shamatha/shiney).
- More importantly for us all meditations - Vipassana, Mantra-based and Yogic - can create breaks as evidenced by experiences related else where in the thread. For the sake of this discussion we can transcend the varieties and just lump them as meditation.
- Based on many conversations, I believe that meditation first amplifies the psychological makeup. If someone's mind has nervous tendencies or a tendency to mania then meditation will amplify it and bring it out. The analog of Crossfit and related intense regimens are useful here. Crossfit done without consideration for the body's deficiencies (e.g. lack of mobility in certain joints) - will lead to injury centered on the where the deficiencies lie. So if I have bad shoulder mobility, doing overhead cleans will probably cause a tear in my rotator cuff. Intense meditation has to be tailored to the individual and just like intense workout regimens, there has to be concurrent rehab of deficient areas. I unfortunately am not qualified to speak more about this.
- Benefits of Meditation: There is a notion that meditation is beneficial and can cure things that ail us. I think this is a very mistaken idea bought about by commercialization and packaging of meditation. I break down benefits from meditative practice especially retreat into the following components but would appreciate hearing more on this:
-- Greater focus. Focusing on the breath or another object greatly helps sharpen our ability to focus. This has obvious benefits in daily life rife with distractions. Greater focus also manifests as "mindfulness" or just awareness. A person who is mindful, as a result of meditation, is perceived in an interaction as present and focused. AFAIK, the world mindfulness does not occur anywhere in the Buddhist teachings and is a artefact of translation ;)
-- Dopamine fasting - Removing all stimuli for a few days in retreat and simple sustenance amplifies the senses and rewinds the hedonic adaptation treadmill. Upon exiting retreat, this leads to feelings of euphoria on encountering everyday stimuli like food or a cup of tea or a flower.
- Meditative absorption - Single pointed absorption in an object is a flow state and can be very pleasurable. Watching a sports event or a great movie is a flow experience where you forget the distinction between object and subject. Meditation makes this experience reachable on a daily/weekly basis to a accomplished meditator.
- Finally, behavior change from meditative realizations. This is function of the framework of meditation - Vipassana, Yogic, Mantra, etc. For example, if I can realize that my states of mind are transient by experience than perhaps I will be more detached from them which might give me a superpower of acting far more rationally in the face of my own fleeting passions.
In summary, meditation in an established tradition can be bring transformation, but approach it cautiously. A meditation retreat will not cure you and meditation is a journey like exercise and has to be repeated, ideally daily, to keep the benefits. The benefits might lie on the other side of a long journey.
Meditation in all traditions is a means to an end - the end being realization or one-pointedness. Meditation in the modern context is stripped from its goal and made an end in itself. Meditation on its own, sans realizations, will not heal or solve any of our problems but can offer transitory benefits.
After three weeks, it culminated in an auditory hallucination that was indistinguishable from telepathy. Then the mania suddenly drained and never came back however often I repeated the exercises.
Years later, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but it's usually fairly mild, with hypomania and mixed states which get worse when under stress. Nothing was ever again as intense as the meditation-induced mania of 2004.
Vamachara stuff is forbidden and can lead to extremely dangerous reverse effects.
I think the site where I got it doesn't exist any more. I think I have a copy in my own archives somewhere.
The basic gist of the practices was a combination of various asanas, mantras, pranayama and visualisation.
Kind of like how self harm is forbidden. Vamamarga is psychological self harm, in a sense. Aghoris then take that same principle to the next level.
The problem is people fetishize, or in other ways make arguments and ideas about Indian origin things within the context of religion. That has in my opinion done far more harm in understanding the philosophical approaches of Dharma than any other misconception, including translation errors.
Even if someone had told me that it was risky, I still would have had the attitude of, thanks, but I need to find this out for myself from experience rather than just take your word for it.
So again, the point here is that it's important to be knowledgeable about whatever subject matter that you're taking part in, not least because of being respectful, but because that way whatever task is being undertaken can be done "correctly". Including, perhaps especially, if you have belief in occult ideas.
this thread reads like an H.P. Lovecraft or Dan Brown novel. Please keep this thread alive, it's fascinating!
They'll mess you up.
It was so much cooler.
Basically, by definition it is about breaching Hindu societal taboos, unless I am vastly misunderstanding this brief summary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-hand_path_and_right-hand_...
It isn't obvious that asanas, breathing exercises, mantras and visualisation are somehow breaching any taboos of any society that I know of ;)
Why do we consider those seriously while making fun of LaVey's rituals?
In occultism, "left hand path" means black magic. So it would be the "right hand path" followers who forbid practice vamachara.
Glad to hear you're also feeling better these days :)
This to me sounds like the equivalent of trying to squat with a 200 kg weight on your back on day one when you have never trained with weights before.
In the context of Dharmic spiritual traditions, meditation (of various types) is intentionally aimed at facilitating a deconstruction of your normal sense of self and also induce altered states of consciousness. These should not be taken lightly.
If you are going to pursue it seriously, it's best to gradually ease into the tradition and respect the spiritual context in which these techniques are supposed to work. It's possible that the recommendations that Dharmic spiritual traditions have for ethics and devotional practices allow us to be more prepared for our experiences during mediation sittings and receive them in a more wholesome way.
I never really got the hang of meditating, despite receiving training from branches of several international training conglomerates (ISCKON, Art of Living, SRF). But meditation as a practice, in the society I grew in, was hailed as the Godsend ultimate technique of taming your minds, something that will definitely and positively stimulate your brain and make you healthier and more active. I didn't (and don't) understand this stuff so I simply dismissed it as a harmless placebo and went on with it.
But before this I had never even thought of it being potentially harmful, and there were absolutely no warnings circulated about this anywhere - neither by the conglomerates and nor by the indie self-styled "gurus" scattered across India and the world. The fact that this is the first time I'm encountering this notion is quite surprising.
Edit: Until quite recently (< 150 ago), most people were deeply integrated into family life, both in the West and elsewhere. There was simply way less opportunity for people to isolate themselves and mess around with random techniques from the internet.
Unlike modern international meditation training institutions like Art of Living and SRF, traditional eastern systems always limited what level of practice was safe for 'lay' practitioners. The hardcode stuff was always reserved for renounced practitioners who would leave everything and go live with the teachers.
While the Goenka retreats profess to be secular and for everyone, I got serious cult vibes from the minute that I arrived. Technically, the in-person instructors are only assistant teachers. There is only one true teacher: Goenka himself. During his nightly instruction via VHS tape - the only human interaction you're allowed all day - Goenka teaches Buddhist metaphysics (I recall something about vibrations of the universe).
The retreat creates the perfect environment to break you down psychologically: sleep deprivation, food restriction, lack of human interaction, prohibitions on reading, writing, and exercising. Throughout the retreat, there is ingroup/outgroup pressure: only the strong can make it through; people who leave or aren't able to handle the meditation are weak. If you have a concern about your experience, the standard solution is more meditation. If you question this, you didn't give the retreat a chance, you weren't meditating hard enough. Then, at the end of the retreat you're hit with a love bomb on the way out the door. [1]
Interpreted charitably, I thought this retreat was similar to military training or fraternity hazing. Less so, it was more like solitary confinement or torture.
I'm glad I went - I gained some insights and it was an incredibly valuable experience. I'm also glad I left early. If you're thinking of going on one of these retreats, know what the assistant teacher told me on mine: "This is a Buddhist purification ritual."
first, the nightly videos. not cultish and not metaphysics. don't believe me? view them all here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz7QHNvNFfA&list=PLPJVlVRVmh...
second, plenty of delicious food. if it's your first time, dinner is fruits. if it's not your first retreat you aren't offered dinner, but you really don't need the calories because you've mostly been sitting. all the food is vegetarian.
third, the assistant teachers are well trained.
finally, you left after a few days so you cannot speak to what happens at the end. it's called "loving-kindness" meditation and it's at the end because yes, the retreat can be intense, and it's like a balm to treat any difficulties you encountered along the way. here's a link to what it actually is: https://www.mettainstitute.org/mettameditation.html
> Technically, the in-person instructors are only assistant teachers. There is only one true teacher: Goenka himself.
There are some actual teachers that tour the globe. But mostly it's ATs. I think there's a lot of hoops to jump through to become a teacher. And I believe the ATs also must be able to jump in and teach if equipment fails.
> During his nightly instruction via VHS tape - the only human interaction you're allowed all day
You can meet with the AT one-on-one to discuss anything in the middle of the day. You can sit before the AT after the last meditation and ask questions.
> Goenka teaches Buddhist metaphysics (I recall something about vibrations of the universe).
Much of what he says is based on teachings 2500+ years old when philosophers didn't know what atoms were, but were thinking about what the most sub-divisible thing was. I heard it put this way, 'The course should be taken seriously, but not literally.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism
> Then, at the end of the retreat you're hit with a love bomb on the way out the door.
They teach 'metta' at the end. Which is not so much being love-bombed, but you meditating on loving-kindness to others.
I'm glad you got out when you did.
Edit: Fixed a quote + clarification
Edit: Why the downvote, did I say something that wasn't factual?
As a long time meditator, my experience with vipassana is that it is the hardcore path, for those willing to risk crashing and burning to get to enlightenment faster. Techniques like mettā, tonglen, or dzogchen seem to be ~5-10x less likely to be associated with a psychotic event - which at that point, seems like it could just be about prior history [1]. It's worth mentioning that Britton, the academic meditation critic in the article is a co-author of this paper.
[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
That’s all to say I think it’s important that people take it slow and get familiarized with the actual teachings to ground the experience. Jumping in to a 10 day, 10 hour per day training with little or no context is going to be seriously difficult. We have to understand that these practices come from places where the students wouldn’t be completely unfamiliar with the basics of the teachings. There would be at least a basic cultural understanding of the point of meditation (an actual spiritual practice) as opposed to a kid from the US that hears it makes you feel better and might make you more productive.
This reminded me of my experience at a crossfit gym. I never once heard the instructors tell anyone to stop going even if they were likely to hurt themselves by continuing.
Sure you can get up and leave the WOD whenever you want, but that social pressure is likely to push adherents beyond what they would normally do. This can be good if nothing goes wrong, but it can also mask preexisting issues or issues that arise from the practice itself.
However, I do agree that if you meditate for an hour a day or more (or sure, 40 minutes) having a good teacher is important.
Dr. Britton put together something called a "Meditation Safety Toolbox" that looks really interesting, looking forward to diving into it: https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/britton/meditation-safet...
What a wise lifter might do is work their way up to the point they're ready and might enjoy lifting 200kgs and then attempt it.
Like most things, start small and work your way up. I'd imagine the same should apply to meditation.
I think this is the study. "Amount of MM practice was correlated with increased PSG arousals, awakenings, stage 1 and decreased SWS, in a linear dose-dependent fashion."
"Bad Vibes- Warning: Meditating may be hazardous to your health" SFWeekly, 2002-08-28
https://web.archive.org/web/20091114023754/https://www.sfwee...
Lifetimes are not what most westerners are (or should be, imho) willing to sacrifice.
Top tier meditation institutions in the west and in Asia are not ignorant of meditation induced psychosis and they have ways of dealing with it. Everyone who claims all meditation is great and nothing bad can happen is ignorant.
Some of my most respected meditation teachers are known for recommending that people don't take up intensive retreats if they feel they have a choice in the matter. If it feel unavoidable, then do it. If it's just something you want to try, don't. I can immediately recall at least 4 saying this.
However, if 20 minutes of mindfulness a day sets you off into strange psychological territory, then I have a hard time believing that meditation was at fault. The "dosage" simply isn't high enough to be the key factor.
Or lying. I doubt the meditation center in the article updated the claims on their site after these events.
Edit: Also it's tricky if your students are motivated enough to get in that they'll lie.
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards...
I will recommend that a friend does one, after giving some warnings, and making sure to talk with them afterwards, but I wouldn't blindly recommend anybody do one.
About ten years ago, I experimented doing 20 minutes in the morning and an additional 20 minutes in the early evening. I did this for about six months, and I may have overdid it, because some very, very strange things began to happen. I stopped meditating after a particularly weird and frightening experience which I will now describe:
I was entirely stone cold sober, driving my car on the highway talking to a friend in the passenger seat, when suddenly I found myself looking down at the planet, from what I can only describe as an orbital altitude of somewhere around 400 km or so, while at the same time, I continued to drive the car and have a discussion!
Part of my consciousness (or perception) seemed to momentarily bifurcate and be somewhere else, in this case, floating high above the Earth. That was the day I stopped meditating. Apparently this is a known attainment in certain circles that believe in this kind of thing (I'm still a skeptic at heart) but being in two places at once wasn't my cup of tea. I have a hard enough time as it is focusing on the road in front of me!
I wouldn't say this is the only strange thing I experienced; there's a lot of them to speak of, but that was certainly the strangest of them all. I've taken much more pleasure and satisfaction from lucid dreaming instead, which is something I still do to this day.
> I've taken much more pleasure and satisfaction from lucid dreaming instead, which is something I still do to this day.
I feel like the potential therapeutic benefits of lucid dreaming are incredibly unexplored. Maybe partially because it can be difficult and inconsistent to induce them, especially depending on the person. I don't know if there's any one technique that works well for everyone.
It's certainly a common enough experience, albeit rare in the middle of daily life on that amount of practice. What it means, benefits, etc. are what's up for question.
I guess by "strange psychological territory" I was more thinking of destabilizing and harmful things that don't stop even after you stop meditating.
Edit: also, thanks for sharing.
Zoloft can really mess you up if you stop cold-turkey. How odd that they didn't bring up comorbid risk-factors until half-way through the article.
This example is less about the potential negatives side-affects of meditation, and more about the care one should take when getting off serious medications. Most retreat centers (and other "guides") usually suggest several weeks or more of no medication before going on your "journey". The side affects of getting off medications, especially ones she apparently was taking for years, can not be underestimated in this story.
It's also clear she was prone to emotional instability before the retreat, and like any treatment -- pharmaceutical or otherwise -- it can have side-affects that need to be managed, dosages that need to be tweaked, etc.
This story also ignores the 90+% of people who have profound experiences on these Vipassana retreats. Just know what you are getting into, and know it can be very very intense even for those who have practiced meditation for years.
(*that's what the phenomenon is called: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind/...)
Put the right stress on any mind, and it will break. I spent four months believing I was a fictional character from my own writing. The experience permanently changed my personality. (See my blog if you’re curious about some of my life experiences.)
My brain is more susceptible to this kind of thing, but it can happen to neurotypical people, usually from traumatic events.
I think that’s the gist of the article, but maybe the author could have been more explicit. The “mindfulness” movement detached meditation from its source and repackaged it for consumerist society. On the receiving end, users of “Calm” or “Headspace” purchase a product with an incomplete warning label... but perhaps if we were more mature spiritually we wouldn’t go venturing so naively into hazardous territory while being so ill-equipped to deal with what’s out there (or “in here”, as it were).
Also, in the gospel the story of the temptation in the wilderness comes after, not before, Jesus' recognition of his divine origin and mission. He was already baptized and pronounced to be God's son before ever going there. What's more this recognition has already come to him in childhood. And even if the order of events had been correct, then the nature of the events does not match, because when he was in the wilderness, Jesus was basically put to the test by the devil, who was trying to distract him from his divine commission, rather than being commissioned by God.
2. The books probably relevant to this discussion—the Gospels—are generally believed to have been written before the turn of the first century. Some argue that Mark and Luke were written as early as the 50s, 20 years after Jesus died. [0]
[0] https://jimmyakin.com/2018/11/when-was-the-gospel-of-mark-wr...
the books we see today are translations of heavily copyedited and consolidated writeups of oral traditions.
scholars like Bart Ehrmann have been very helpful to see that whatever the word of god was, it's deeply hidden behind the words we hold in our hands, and the.words are by no means a historically accurate, literal "truth", but a consensus on what the author's and editors over centuries hold dear as spirtual and religious "true" foundation.
Few who cast unwarranted doubt upon the New Testament realize how extremely sceptical they would have to be about every other piece of ancient writing, because none of them even comes close to the new testament in terms of: 1) number of copies 2) being written close to the time of the actual events
[1] https://crossexamined.org/is-the-new-testament-reliable-erhm...
book: kenneth s leong the zen teachings of jesus
the silent prayer was also.identified with the "desert fathers" who have shaped much if the foundations of early Christianity.
silent prayer is a "come and see for yourself" approach, shifting the ownership of religious truth from the teacher as nd the church defining it to the individual discovering it through "discernment of the spirits", "in Christo".
silent, contemplative prayer is dismissed by some literalist and evangelical Churches as "satanic", "diabolical", "umbilical", but hey, what isn't :-)
Jesus adhered to the Hebrew religion and comfortably stayed within that tradition. His emphasis on 'silent' prayer, was simply in contradistinction to the hypocritical performative prayer of certain religious leaders that did not come from pure motives. The reason why prayer was silent, was not because it was in any way meant to be a mystical eastern style meditative experience leading to some kind of emotional ecstasy or zen or any other psychological manifestation, but rather because it was meant to emphasise the true goal of prayer i.e. maintaining a personal relationship with God through verbal communication.
Believers were encouraged to approach God like they would a friend or father and speak to him about their lives and not consider their human needs too lowly to concern a deity. Eastern meditation on the other hand is characterised by emptying of the mind, the polar opposite of how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Jews and Christians throughout history have believed that on the other end of a prayer is a personal God who is responsive to our petitions whereas buddhism has no concept of a personal God but instead concerns itself merely with the human mind. For Jews and Christians the efficacy or power is not in the act of praying, but in the voluntary act of God. For Zen buddhists the efficacy or power is inherent in the act of meditation.
Communal prayer was still considered appropriate and was encouraged, Jesus just didn't want anyone showing off to their religious friends as a means to gain status without truly caring about God, His righteousness, etc.
Prayer by itself was also not considered a method to discover truth. There is a heavy emphasis on seeking truth in the study of the word of God which runs throughout Jesus' teachings, which was already present in Judaism and continues to this day in Christianity. The desert fathers, as well as mystical sects in judaism and islam are outliers, and their religious practices are amalgamations of mystical traditions of other religions with their respective host religion (christianity, islam, judaism). Theirs is a religious phenomenology that draws on the religious verbiage and concepts of a familiar religion, without concerning itself with the authoritative source of said religion, but rather with seeking a mystical experience.
It is not just literalists and evangelicals that consider eastern style meditation and associated religious concepts as foreign to mainstream historical christianity and judaism, it's most reputable scholars in the fields of NT studies, Church History, etc.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3270411?seq=1
it connects silent prayer to Philo, a contemporary of Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo
and it connects silent prayer to early desert fathers, like Clement of Alexandria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_of_Alexandria
Also. For clarity (you may know this, but others may not) I want to distinguish very clearly the difference between a silent prayer and meditation.
A silent prayer is verbalized intention within your head, sometimes mouthed. If you were to look up Judaism's silent prayer, it is repeating a ritual sequence of words - the meanings of which you should know. As traditionally conceived, it is addressing the Eternal as a Person.
The different meditation approaches I've encountered - conventional "Western mindfulness" and a more intense secular Hindu system - are focused on detaching awareness. Sometimes mantras are used/repeated. It is exceptionally variant from the early silent prayer approach, or even the nominal silent prayer approach of today.
Contemplative prayer did start with the desert fathers, I think.
* this immersion is not about fancy mystical experiences, but about healing in the presence of what as Christians we call G'd; it often is initially calm, then happy, ecstatic to some, and then that makes room for neither ecstasy nor void but pure presence, a state that can be experienced, but not described appropriately. On that path there lays and lurks inner work on your personal baggage, a liberating cleansing process, which is not only fun while it lasts, and a process which contemplative teachers today could call 'purifications'. The beatifications of the sermon on the mount give a fairly good step by step guidance of this purification process which leads to life "in Christo", as Paul describes it.
* contemplative or silent prayer was and is an outlier, yes, however certainly not in early Christianity, see the sibling comment for a random quick example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26497034
* contemplative / silent prayer, like comparable Jewish and Islamic traditions, and like a number of eastern traditions, puts the experiential personal liberation above authoritative teachings of some church or another. It's a radical shift of authority from rulebooks and logical learning to an inner process, guided and supported by open minded teachers.
* I respectfully doubt you have read the book. It is anything but superficial.
May I ask if you have personal experience with any kind of meditation, secular (like MBSR) or in some religious tradition?
I'm not completely sure about this. Certainly it is to do with letting go of ruminations, worries and distracting thoughts. But there is a lot of talk about focus and insight, and this seems similar to the western concept of meditation.
Similarly, the focus that meditation requires is a discipline of not getting distracted by the outside world or by the sea of thoughts and emotions that resides in our mind, but it is not a focus on any particular idea or concept. Rather, it is a focus on (achieving) a certain state of mind or experience.
Meditation in the Biblical sense is deliberative, logical, active and always involves freely thinking about a certain topic or set of ideas. It does not seek to constrain/limit itself beyond the level of focus required for reading a book, for example. Meditation in the eastern sense seeks to 'transcend' logic and emotion and does not require or depend on any logical or emotional processes. Actually, logical and emotional processes hinder meditation.
There are many forms of eastern meditation. E.g. Vajrayana deity visualization meditation
This has occurred to me as well. But then, this is good news! It means that at least theoretically it might be possible to understand these important historical figures by inducing these hallucinations and psychotic experiences in ourselves in a deliberate and controlled way. This might be the key to understanding religions thoroughly.
I'd even say that a great deal of human progress depends on carrying out this project.
Per Hindu practices, Meditation is the first, foremost step towards self realization. For attaining liberation and knowing god. It is a tool to calm the mind and prepare it for deeper states of realization (samadhi, nirvikalpa samadhi, etc). It is just a tool, like a hammer or chainsaw, that serves a greater purpose.
Yogic practices, at-least the physical ones, are for strengthening the body to face the rigors of long term meditation and deeper conditions.
Hindu scriptures clearly say that such practices are to be done under the guidance of a qualified guru (A true guru is one who has attained realization him/her self.)
Nowadays, business ventures are being built around this fad with mostly falsehoods mixed with grains of truth.
There is an excellent book [0] that records the conversations of one of the greatest modern era yogis [1], whose whole life was spent in meditation. The book is a great read and records his conversations with many western visitors. Do read it to get a better understanding of the context of meditation and related topics.
[0] https://selfdefinition.org/ramana/Talks-with-Sri-Ramana-Maha...
I think it's better analogy to think of it as a technique, like a somersault or a cartwheel. but I'm just nitpicking.
But isn't that what all gurus say, that they are "true gurus". They would further warn you against anybody who doesn't agree with them as a "false guru"
Edit: If you want to get your own measure of the character, the evening discourses are freely available, though perhaps disjointed without actually doing or committing to the actual practice.
> alleged shadiness
I can't speak on each and every guru out there, but many do seem to be eager to take your worldly possessions for you own benefit, and much of this is predicated on their self proclaimed enlightenment. The perverse incentives seem like a vacuum for sociopaths to occupy
in cultivating discernment, you realize that you possess the capacity to identify others in the world who have the quality of amplifying the light within yourself.
however, until you come to recognize that light within, you will be susceptible to images, projections, and trickery.
ultimately, the outer guru is merely there to introduce you to your inner guru... your inner teacher. the inner teacher in the highest form of guru.
Isn't it 7th stage or something? In yogic philosophies. Admittedly don't know lot about these stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashtanga_(eight_limbs_of_yoga)
I'd be more inclined to suggest it was the isolation, loneliness and stress of uncertainty that would trigger something like that. It was a dark time.
Curious if your friend started meditation hoping it might alleviate and already uncomfortable mental state, or they felt fine and just wanted to meditate for fun ?
I'm not a doctor, or psychiatrist but from the exposure I've had from my own practice, I'd imagine taking up anything other than a very, very, very light meditation course during such a stressful uncertain time could really expose one too a bit too much sensory overload.
To me that can be appropriately unclear about what causes what.
This makes no sense to me.
I’ve had mixed results - my personal observation is to treat it like a psychedelic trip: only go in when you’re in a good mental state.
The odd thing is the typical therapy for ocd is cbt (cognitive behavioral therapy), which, despite intersecting quite a bit with meditation, is very effective.
Yoga always feels beneficial.
As others have said, 'meditation' is a really vague term but in the context of OCD I got the impression it's just about practicing shifting your attention to one thing and then shifting it gently back there when it begins to wander; as well as allowing OCD thoughts to just 'exist' and not engaging with them.
As a fellow OCD sufferer I just wanted to say good luck. A bit off-topic for this thread but 'The OCD Stories' podcast, NOCD (https://www.treatmyocd.com) and the Zoom support groups run by OCDPeers (https://ocdpeers.com/) have been life-changing for me.
That's enough on its own to cause the issues being attributed to meditation. That also tells us she had prior issues even though the article seems to be trying to place the blame solely on meditation.
Antidepressant withdrawal is nothing to mess with.
After my recent mildly disappointing or sobering experiences with psychedelics I am a little worried about that too. They often are sold as the fix to serious problems and unstable people may get into a bad position when their problems aren't solved but they still pretend that they are doing great.
For those who are willing to really commit their lives to it, meditation - or to be more precise the spiritual path that leads to it and merges with it - can absolutely cure many neurotic issues. This happens when people stop pretending to feel great and honestly accept that they feel bad, anxious or whatever. By learning to befriend your "bad" emotions slowly and whilst nourishing "good" emotions (through e.g. loving kindness or compassion meditation), you start to slowly unravel some of your milder neurotic issues. But it should be communicated very clearly that you can't sprinkle a bit of mindfulness over your messed up life and expect to be enlightened...
There is also probably not much more dangerous than a very poorly functioning spiritual practice / teacher. The story here about Vipassana is unsurprising to say the least. It is sort of like squatting a 200kg weight with bad form, over and over again for years, but instead of your body you are breaking your consciousness.
The key takeaway is that if you want to pursue this stuff you really need to find a good teacher who you trust.
That’s the problem. It’s easy to trust an incompetent teacher. How do you find completed teacher in a field with many very charismatic charlatans?
The most accomplished people who I know in this stuff have spent decades moving from teacher to teacher.
Eventually you can tell who is full of shit and who isn't. There are certain red flags that you can learn to spot pretty quickly. If you spot a red flag it also doesn't necessarily mean the person doesn't know something worth learning, it just means they are stuck somewhere else. There are a lot of pretty high level people who are a little bit egotistical for example but it doesn't mean they don't know some useful techniques.
The guy teaching me has trained under like a dozen very well known people over the years and his current teacher spent several decades in Asia working his way up through a series of teachers. The latter person I'm describing has talked about being very skeptical of his teachers to the point where in one instance he went into a teachers fridge to confirm he was lying about what he did or didn't eat.
In my ears, this lends cautionary support for Nietzsche's criticism of stoics and Buddhists. I'm not very knowledgeable here, but roughly his argument is that the avoidance of life's suffering is nothing but an escape from life itself. If one engages with the world, one must deal with pain and joy as a consequence.
On more practical terms, it's always good to measure how your inner model corresponds with reality.
That's the specific pain the Buddha teaches about and tries to help with—it's not about becoming numb to the world at all. It's simply overcoming the desire for things to be different than the way they actually are. The method, by the way, is to become more aware of the world and your feelings—not less so.
Disclaimer: I'm just a lay student of Buddhism and far from a teacher myself. This is just my understanding from years of reading about it. Not all Buddhists agree with this perspective, but I believe it's the vast majority amongst Theravadans at least.
That's actually one of the best ways I've heard it described.
To frame this with what I saying about Nietzsche- his criticism might have encouraged one to wrestle with natural order. Or perhaps stated that passivity with regard to the state of things is undesirable.
But didn't Buddha himself want things to be different, and that's why he started teaching?
When I was a kid, I thought about nihilism a lot, but I don't think thinking about it brought any adverse effect on my mental development or day-to-day behavior. "What is one life compared to the vast cosmos" I would ask myself such questions and feel very lost, but when lunch time comes, I knew I was hungry and I went to eat.
I suspect that the physiological factors contributes more to such psychosis as described in the article, than the idea of nihilism or Buddhism. The underlying mental condition, sleep deprivation, the vicissitude of her life, the exhaustion from sitting still, the sudden brake on taking meds... One of those would drive some people crazy, and she had them all.
Daniel M. Ingram is especially clear on these issues BTW, and his writings in general are a good introduction to insight meditation as it's actually practiced by those who seek some form of stream entry.
“Mastering the core teachings of Buddha” may be next on my audible... we shall see
I've mentioned it so many times in this thread that people will think I get a commission :D But I find it incredibly well written by someone with a very clear mind and a knack for wordplay.
(As an aside, "sloth", which is one of the seven deadly sins, was originally "acedia", is a feeling of a lack of concern. [1])
I think it's possible to gain a large deal of motivation and drive from the concepts of virtues and doing everything we can to live virtuously and improve the world accordingly.
The "think in the right way" takes just a little practice. The "act in the right way" is the hard part, and the whole thing falls apart, in exactly the way you've noticed, without both. I've yet to achieve both, personally, though simply having "think the right way", with a little moderating wisdom from age, isn't nothing.
I think a trap in general with systems like Stoicism, or Zen Buddhism, or similar, is believing that thinking or knowing is anything more than one maybe-necessary-but-certainly-not-sufficient step.
(frankly, I'm not even sure what "go by the right way" means, yet, and would have to return to the original Greek to figure out whether it's just a summation of the two following ideas, or something separate—however, as I'm still working on "acting", I'll leave that for another day)
[EDIT] For those reading this without having read Meditations, it's heavy on duty and obligation, which is deep in the "doing" side of the above dichotomy. The "think the right way" is largely about ignoring that which one cannot control, but the trouble is that anything in the immediate past becomes "beyond one's control", which is where the parent's slipped-deadlines and such become easy to brush off without the duty-and-obligation and act-the-right-way habits balancing it out. Can absofuckinglutely confirm that if you get very good at the "think the right way" side, and only that side, it gets dangerously easy to not be bothered by failure or inaction.
Meditations helped teach me how to ignore pain and temporary things in pursuit of the immortal virtuous life of purpose. One that creates long lasting works of art, beautiful memories and a solid reliable character that those I care about can count on.
Stoicism is like a filter. You shake out all the bullshit out of your life and theoretically find the thing that you cannot shake out. That is your true drive.
If you shook the bullshit out of your life and found nothing was left, then perhaps you should consider what is out there that you are attracted to.
Neither stoicism nor buddhism is avoidance of suffering, but inuring one's self to suffering. Buddhism (particularly the therevada teachings of Goenka) explicitly warns against aversion and craving to sensations (that of suffering/desire/etc.), but encourages a mind of equanimity in the face of either. Stoicism has this similar goal to temper reaction, but lacks an effective practice to reach it.
- Meditation is not a spa treatment for the mind. Certainly not in the short-term. I'm sure there are many meditation-like activities that will bring you more immediate "calming" effects. But those aren't meditation.
- First time(s) you sit, one of your first realizations - through experience - will likely be around the impossibility of "stopping thinking." You might get into a wrestling match with your own mind. If I can't stop my own thoughts, then they aren't actually mine, right? Whose are they, then?
- This might even lead to the realization that "these thoughts aren't mine, and my life has been my thoughts, so...who the fuck am I?!!!!"
- I can't fathom a regular meditation practice that is wholly independent from any sort of intellectual study (for many, that is some version of Buddhism).
- Meditation (time on the cushion) is just a teeny tiny sliver of the entire pie. Life (off the cushion) is where the real training is.
- Awareness is not happy, it is not fun, it is not calm, it is not exciting, it is not an emotional feeling. Awareness is just awareness.
This is merely scratching the surface. But the first point is crucial. Meditation isn't some once-in-a-while activity that you do to "feel better." That's something else.
That said, a well-known "side-effect" of meditation is some sort of enlightenment that more frequently will be reached with drugs like LSD. But also very monotonous long-term work can do this - at least that's what I've read in that Zen book.
Maybe this is part of America waking up to how messed up it is underneath it all.
I am also told, there is a strict post-retreat protocol regarding re-engagement in the wider world. People are amazingly vulnerable at this time. The facilitating staff are told to be strictly hands-off, and avoid situations of risk for either of them. (client, or helper)
I think that I'm just saying, its like the go-kart track down the road. the one which has a terms-and-conditions board a mile long: its a better choice than the one which doesn't seem to care about safety, even if its a bit off-putting at first.
Vipassana meditation have brought positive change to my life. That's why it makes perfect sense to me that it will have some adverse side-effects for some people.
It works i.e. it has positive effects - therefore it must have some negative effects, at least for some people. That's how many things behave in the world, right? In physics its called "action and re-action".
"Some clinicians believe that meditation can cause psychological problems in people without underlying conditions, and that even forty minutes of meditation per day can pose risks. In 1975, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease published the case study of a thirty-eight-year-old woman, Mrs. M., who had no history of trauma or psychotic episodes but had begun to experience “altered reality testing and behavior” soon after taking up transcendental meditation. She was meditating for twenty minutes, twice a day. The authors, psychiatrists at the University of California, Davis, wrote that
an altered state of consciousness within days after beginning TM, and the occurrence of the “waking fantasies” shortly thereafter, leave little doubt of some causal relationship between the use of TM and the subsequent psychosis-like experience.
They concluded, “We would expect the occurrence of powerfully compelling fantasies in some portion of normal individuals utilizing depressive procedures of any form,” including meditation."
Could you offer some terms used to describe them so I could look more into this subject?
It's in fact the shortest article I ever read - 0 words after the headline. Unless I refresh the site and manage to read the text within the split second it appears before it rapidly zooms beyond the website's borders.
Is this an exercise in focus and meditation? Do I have to register like some of the few visible parts of the page suggest? I don't know, but after reflecting on it I don't think I care enough about horrible web design to bother with it.
It isn't easy to sit and be still, everyone who tried will tell you, you will find any kind of excuse to not do it. However if you endure it and spend some time meditating, it will indeed bring perspective and clarity in your mind.
These kinds of retreats are stupid... For number of reasons. Also 'apps for meditation' are extra stupid, except maybe Oak because it is just a timer, so it actually serves a purpose. If you really want to meditate, just sit and relax. OK maybe I was too hard on every kind of retreat, but overall they tend to be profitable endevours.
Because your mind will be maleable, cults love to exploit this state to program you and indoctrinate you.
Also... what happened to this girl is known fenomenon. It usually helps if somebody can tell you in advance it would happen. As I read article, they loaded her with drugs afterwards, not sure which is worse.
Again, cults = bad, you have everything you need to be happy.
The irony of these apps coming out a few years ago. And the popularity of them. I guess it becomes more of a routine and escape from reality, rather than mindfulness and meditation.
The efficacy of these therapies is grounded in a strong and growing body of research (this includes research into their risks). Why not dispense with the woo and approach healing the mind like we do the rest of the body?
Here's an overview of the state of mindfulness therapies, I think it's a much more valuable read than Harper's quasi-clickbaity scare piece: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5353527/
One thing I think has not been mentioned here, is that contemporary culture is very mind-centered. We identify much more strongly with our thoughts than with our feelings, and when feelings are emphasized, it's usually negative ones (see the current culture of outrage). We feel that we are what we think, and tend to work through things by thinking them through. Heart to heart connection is still a thing, always will be because it's part of being human, but it's not very much emphasized in our cultural environment.
So you end up with people taking up forceful, advanced spiritual techniques, and doing it it all from the mind, out of plain conviction and volition. And unless you happen to find very good guidance, that's not altogether unlikely to screw you up.
Every spiritual tradition that I've looked at has a strong component of heart connection at its center, but it's not always very explicit. Theravada Buddhism has metta as an practice, but it's done separately at certain times, rather than emphasizing that it's the prerequisite for the shamatha/vipassana stuff to actually help you rather than mess you up. A strong, secure heart connection is what makes your meditation go in the direction of wholeness rather than dissociation. All sorts of spiritual traditions are connected to religions that teach you to love your God or your Guru or your favorite enlightened being, or all sentient beings, and they usually have some form of formal worship too, e.g puja. It's not the object of worship that makes the difference, or the details of the ceremony - it's what the reverential, loving attitude does to you. Without love as the lubricant, spiritual practice is not only often ineffective, it's downright dangerous.
"When a person who wants Truth more than life falls in love with what is, it happens." - Bart Marshall, on spiritual enlightenement. Note the "love" part is just as important as the "truth" part.
One problem nowadays with all the cultural crossing and mixing, is that we get taught Eastern practices, and either the reverential aspect is lost in the process of Westernization, or even more insidiously, it gets transmitted but doesn't work for us. You're a grown up adult joining a spiritual community, and you might learn that it's customary to bow down to a statue, or make an elaborate puja once or twice a month, you go through the motions, even enjoy it, enjoy the connection with fellow practitioners, but the deep heart connection is not really there, because you're a jaded adult who didn't grow up with this particular figure you're now bowing to or making offerings to, and anyway why would someone offer food to a stone statue? Get caught in the social aspects of it, and you might not even notice that an important part of your chosen spirituality is just not working.
One thing to take away from my rant: if you're doing any kind of spiritual practice, please please make sure you open your heart before, during and after, in whatever way actually works for you.
Shockingly ignorant and dismissive of you.
> For a cumulative ten hours and forty-five minutes, she sat cross-legged on a rug, her spine erect, and tried to focus on her breath.
This practice _will_ cause disassociation at some point, which is precisely what happened when she broke out into psychosis after engaging in the practice for 60+ total hours.
Maybe you go through life constantly asserting and believing things that are in no way true....with no experience nor credentials nor having even read any literature to back any of them up...
Scott Alexander did a great book review if you want the summary: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/18/book-review-mastering-...
This finishes with a Scott-at-his-best quote that is pertinent to the OP:
> Why would you want to do any of this?
> The Buddha is supposed to have said: “I gained nothing whatsoever from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment”. And sure, that’s the enigmatic Zen-sounding sort of statement we expect from our spiritual leaders. But if Buddhist practice is really difficult, and makes you perceive every single sensation as profoundly unsatisfactory in some hard-to-define way, and can plunge you into a neverending depression which you might get out of if you meditate hard enough, and then gives you a sort of permanent annoying low-grade bipolar disorder even if you succeed, then we’re going to need something better than pithy quotes...
> Once he’s stripped everything else away, he says the only thing one can say about enlightenment is that it grants a powerful true experience of the non-dual nature of the world.
> But still, why would we want to get that? I am super in favor of knowledge-for-knowledge’s-sake, but I’ve also read enough Lovecraft to have strong opinions about poking around Ultimate Reality in ways that tend to destroy your mental health.
Worth noting that as far as I can tell most of the meditation community doesn't get behind Ingram's account of the "dark night", and teachers talk more about having blissful/tranquil mental states available on tap. Ingram might retort that most teachers are full of shit and haven't attained enlightenment, they probably just got first Jhana.
Most people round here would probably read the "fire kasina" and magick stuff that he's talking about after "14 hours per day for 10-20 days in good practice conditions with full, unbridled, undistracted effort." and think -- yep, that sounds like a psychologically risky state.
My general take is basically the same as with using psychedelics for treating trauma and depression; any medicine which is powerful enough to modify your mind and cure major structural issues is also powerful enough to break your mind, if you're unlucky/unskilled/unguided in the application.
The (completely incorrect) Western image of deep meditation as "deep relaxation" is a big problem here, and that's compounded by it being quite awkward to actually claim you're enlightened, which makes it hard to credential-check your teachers; most people straight up call BS on such claims. From the little meditation I've done, I think it's more likely than not that "cessation" / "enlightenment" is a real mental phenomenon, but I'm not sure that it's actually worth dedicating a decade or two of your life to attain.
Having said all that, light meditation / mindfulness practice is well-documented as being beneficial, so if it's helping you don't stop; just don't feel you need to constantly increase your sit durations and go deeper, if you're not doing so with a specific goal in mind and ideally a community to support you.
Was it because Lovecraft had any special insight into reality? Nope, not at all. But he had insight into some of the horrors that can emerge from the depths of our own minds. Probably partially because, like you said, he was a little bit crazy.