Comment by kumarvvr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kumarvvr | Hacker News Reader

The west (and the east too) has commercialized meditation and yogic practices and reduced them to some pseudo medical amalgam that will solve all your health and mental issues.

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...

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

> A true guru is one who has attained realization him/her self.

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"

Goenka (of the schools mentioned in the article) warns against gurus multiple times in his video lectures, and went out of his way to not dress or act like one. From what I heard, the recordings of him were by the insistence of other students, and wished that the actual teaching was taken up by a new generation. Unfortunately, playing back recordings scales very well, and they almost exclusively proxy as a teacher at the hundreds of vipassana schools around the globe. He was an excellent and charismatic communicator, and some people do deify him a little at the schools, so he kind of became a guru.

What's your thesis here? It looks like you just want us to like this Goenka person.

Thesis seems a high bar for a HN reply. It relates to this thread about gurus, their alleged shadiness, and to the particular school of meditation mentioned multiple times in the OP article. Was I speaking out of turn?

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz7QHNvNFfA

I wouldn't go as far as to allege that gurus are "shady". Just that they have their own interest in the game, so they should be taken with a grain of salt. Same applies to more or less to teachers who benefit from ignorance and doctors who benefit from sickness, firemen who profit from fires and policemen who would lose their job if there was no crime. Not to forget priests who abuse the trust of their flock :-)

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Hell_(film)

To quote myself, emphasis added:

> 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

You put it bluntly and concisely. Makes me think of Annie Lenox song "Some of them want to use you, some of them want to be used by you, everybody's looking for something". Other great related song is of course "Sexy Sadie" by Beatles :-)

it is up to you to decide for yourself

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.

> Per Hindu practices, Meditation is the first, foremost step towards self realization.

Isn't it 7th stage or something? In yogic philosophies. Admittedly don't know lot about these stuff.

You are correct (see the Wikipedia article). Meditation was - and is - not a practice that beginners on the spiritual path would engage with in traditional Yoga or Buddhist practices. The problem is that these practices were taken out of their context (stationary secluded environments like ashrams or secretive groups of wandering mendicants) and commercialized by the West in general and by snake-oil vending gurus in the East.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashtanga_(eight_limbs_of_yoga)

Yeah, moreso for Yoga because it would look cool like gymnastics.

> It is just a tool, like a hammer or chainsaw, that serves a greater purpose.

I think it's better analogy to think of it as a technique, like a somersault or a cartwheel. but I'm just nitpicking.

One of my yoga teachers would coincidentally tell us to approach things slowly and carefully in the middle of practice because “you wouldn’t just toss around a running chainsaw would you?”

thanks for sharing. Ramana is as rare as they come. a true gem of a being

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