I don't really have much sympathy here, it seems, but I don't really understand how one could not expect something like this to happen unless they really avoided speaking to anyone with actual experience (which, yes, means a zen monk, and not someone who spent 3 days in a Hilton doubletree learning how to teach people to 'breathe' and 'unlock their chakras' -- which is all bollocks.)
I follow the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, my teacher would not allow me to go to Sessin (which is a multi day meditation retreat) until I had been practicing for like two years, and I had a lot of stuff come to the surface at my first one that really disturbed me… however, I had my teacher there, and he knew exactly what to say and do to help me through it as he has been through the same. He would not have permitted me to leave in such a disturbed state.
This guy would not be able to do that for his students, and even for himself he didn’t even know about such things. This is bad, and more stories like this will happen as long as charlatans are taking one aspect of an established practice and ignoring the rest.
As a whole, shikantaza when practiced with a teacher is safe. Things like breath awareness, vipassana and such I think are harmful, but that is due to my training and perhaps I am wrong, but for sure, meditation without the “rest” is largely a money machine these days, and people will be harmed by that.
Edit: I would also add that shikantaza as opposed to other forms of meditation is not about manipulating the brain in any way, but simply observing it. This is why we do not do things with a goal, such as counting of breaths or trying to still the mind. Simply sit, observe, and the stillness comes with no effort. There is no goal, and no enlightenment. There is no separation of practice and experience, the practice is enlightenment.
I can’t make a call either way in the authors mental state, but clearly there was stuff going on unrelated to meditation which he clearly needs some help dealing with.
It was not evident to you that taking some time to be alone with yourself could be uncomfortable? It's almost a polar opposite to how most people live their lives. I am genuinely curious what made you believe otherwise - I cannot imagine it.
Every time I take a walk I'm stuck in my head too.
... Why would that be implausible, at least for non-pedantic values of risk-free?
More and more, modern neuroscience confirms aspects of Buddhist teaching; from the nature of self to the workings of emotion. Buddhist meditation practice has been shown to have real and permanent (and positive) effects. Monks have studied the workings of the mind in altered and unaltered states for lifetimes, over thousands of years. Can you name any practice more effective? Because if you can, I'm certain the monks will be interested.
You seem to be comparing meditation to neurosurgery. I have no idea why you think this comparison is valid. Meditation is voluntary control of attention, which you've been doing all of your life, not neurosurgery. No doubt using this in novel ways will present challenges.
> To claim that a certain group of monks has figured out a foolproof and risk-free formula for exploring altered states of consciousness seems implausible.
Why? Democracy was invented thousands of years ago, and we've been through many other systems of govenment since, and yet now everyone believes that democracy is the best way to organize a highly complex global system of intelligent agents. Does it seem implausible to you that a system of governance that's thousands of years old is still the best we know?
Frankly, I have no doubt that a tradition that's thousands of years old and that has had hundreds of thousands of adherents in that time, could have worked out most or all of the challenges it raises. That's a huge sample set if you were analyzing this scientifically, and these spiritual practices were quite systematically explored.
There's no worldwide buddhist conspiracy to shun the "bad" parts of meditation, the post author learned from teachers with no qualification.
Uncomfortable, sure. Experiencing the dark night of the soul is not meant to be comfy. It can be rewarding though. Sometimes it is merely insight into our physical and psychological make up though. I don't care what kind of adventures one gets into but if you start getting extreme with them, you're eventually going to experience some really sketchy, uncomfortable, and even life-threatening situations.
Why Zen specifically? There are many different types of Buddhism.
Even if it does have to be Zen, which kind of Zen? Rinzai or Soto, or some mix of the two (which some Zen schools advocate)?
And why Buddhism, anyway? Meditation is practiced in many different religious traditions.
"mindfulness" is itself rooted in the Theraveda -- not Zen -- Buddhist tradition, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the "right" way to meditate must be a Buddhist way as opposed to, say, one of the many Hindu forms of meditation.
Of course there are many paths, however I am only aware of the one I’ve been down. So, yeah, I have zen tinted glasses on such subjects and whatever I am saying should be taken with the appropriate sodium chloride.
If you don't have anything positive or constructive to add, why not stay silent? That too is a form of mediation.
I'm really hoping you were going for darkly ironic humour, if not, please reread your sentence I quoted and, I don't know, contemplate on it.
Received transmission? From the Trisolarians perhaps?
Buddhism is largely an oral tradition, in that the teachers who exist today can trace their education back up a tree, this is all I mean by transmission.
1) There's no scientific evidence for chi. Or qi, ki, whatever you're calling it in an Asian language, because it's just, like, deeper.[1]
2) "Energy" is the most wooly thinking word ever in pseudoprofound proclamations. For the love of Jesus. (Who most likely existed, but was very definitely not the son of YHWH)
3) You can believe what you like, and I'll believe what I like. And if I ever develop fantastical beliefs, I promise I won't expect you to treat them as real things deserving of your serious consideration. And I'll hope you do me the decency of reciprocating that implicit respect.
You may be able to teach yourself meditation from a book, without a teacher. But that can't confer on you the confidence that you're doing it right. Many practices depend critically on confidence. Of course, you have to be confident that your master has really mastered the particular practice; you gain that confidence by knowing that the master received transmission, from someone who received transmission... etc. That line of transmission is referred to as the "lineage" of that practice.
There are no ritual formalities for mindfulness; every monk learns mindfulness, from other monks. The first monks learned it from the Buddha; but if you're going to learn the practice from a layman, you need to start inquiring into your teacher's transmission lineage.
In tantra, there are rituals that accompany the process of mastery: permission to study the text, a reading of the text, a commentary on the text from the master.
But these rituals are not the transmission.
There's usually some kind of "inner" transmission that depends on a personal relationship between the master and the student. But even that doesn't seal the transmission; the student still has to internalise the practice, which might take years.
It's very interesting to look into the process by which tulkus "produce" innovative practices. Often, the teaching is delivered to the tulku by enlightened beings, who learned the practice from some Buddha other than The Sage of the Munis. The tulku must then practice the teaching, usually for many years, until the insight stabilises, before it's safe for him to disseminate it.
Tulkus often have hard lives.
Especially if you unnecessarily revert to jargon when trying to explain your beliefs, you mention "tulku" four times, but define it zero times. This is indicative of in-group signaling.
I avoid articles about pay in the SF area, AI models, Tesla cars, and many other topics. If I read one by accident, I just move on - I don't post a comment whingeing that I'm not interested.
I don't belong to an "in-group" here; I used to be a Buddhist, but I no longer profess any religion. The subject still interests me though; I devoted 40 years of my life to it, and unsurprisingly it has had quite an impact on me.
For what it's worth, a tulku in Tibetan Buddhism is a re-incarnating lama. I realise that I used the wrong word; what I meant was "terton", which is a revealer of hidden teachings. Those hidden/revealed teachings are a specialty of a minority of Tibetan Buddhists - so an "in group", almost by definition. Tertons an interesting subject - if you happen to be interested in such things.
- I had from the beginning espoused a non-religious view of Buddhism. About 20 years in, my teacher stated that Buddhism was definitely religious, and that devotional practices like pujas were non-optional. I didn't like it, but if you take on a teacher, it behoves you to at least try to go along with the teaching - which I did.
- I learned some things about Tibetan history that were the opposite of my earlier, naive beliefs. Pre-communist Tibet was not Shangri-La.
- While I never practiced tantra, the tradition was tantric; I eventually learned some important things about tantra that I found unacceptably obnoxious. I can't go into detail, because I don't want to undermine anyone else's commitment to tantra.
- The group that I had been involved with gradually changed, I became an outsider, and things got difficult. Friends in the group cut me off.
- The behaviour of Buddhist nationalists in places like Myanmar and Srilanka towards non-Buddhist minorities appalled me - this was the tipping point.
- I did my back in through long sitting sessions. The amount of my life that I had spent sitting was beginning to look like heavy expenditure for no obvious gain (I wasn't making much progress).
These are my reasons; they don't apply to anyone else, and I don't deprecate Buddhism or Buddhists. I just gradually came to see that I'm no longer one of them.
There is a great deal that I integrated from Buddhism. It remains the basis for my morality, and my world-view is still largely based on Buddhist thought. But I no longer do any kind of formal practice, and I don't identify as a Buddhist.
Soto, as I understand it, is all about just shikantaza. The rest is optional. I don’t shave my head and wear robes, I just sit.
It took me a while, but this shoe fits. I read Dogen and he seems to agree with this for the most part, but of course ymmv.
When I was a kid / teen, I could get into an altered state by repeating a word (any word) in my mind. After a short while, I would "disconnect" (I don't know how to describe it) :)
I would think any moderately well-traveled psychonaut would not be surprise by anything that the author experienced..