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Comment by 2-718-281-828 | Hacker News Reader

what would you say are examples of harm done by dedicated meditation practiced by people with moral deficiencies?

Alice says a blunt remark that hurts Bob's feeling (unintentional wrongful speech). Bob lets Alice know that he is hurt. The average person would feel guilt/distress and apologize. Instead, Alice is equipped with attainments from meditation. Alice sees the arising of these negative emotions, non-identifies with them, and goes about her life. Bob rightfully sees this as egocentric behavior. The Eightfold Path tries to address this through Right Speech.

I've also seen it make some people more likely to fall into the trap of woo-science and dodgy, spiritual scams. The practice of awakening forces you to investigate the ways you suffer. Before, they may throw their money at these sketchy MLMs and still suffer. With meditation, they can throw their money at them and also suffer a lot less.

The term is "spiritual bypass". You disconnect from emotions, pleasure and pain, etc, see the world as illusion, and no longer feel guilt for poor action.

I'm wondering though if that is really a necessary consequence of non-spiritual meditation practice. There is fine line between meditation and autogenic training style self-hypnosis internalizing convenient messages. So, if a practitioner starts to go down that route all bets are off. OTOH it is true that social norms become less relevant with meditation. For one because meditation makes you strong and social norms are backed up by guilt dynamics which don't work well on actually self-confident people. Also social norms are constructs and you start to look through those instead of thinking they are actually real. But I have some slight feeling that this might as well open up a path to real and authentic moral attitude and personal ethics. Those simply might not be so convenient and easily manipulated and by that seem somewhat frightening to some people.

No, it's not a necessary consequence, just a name for what can happen. It happens with spiritual practices too.

Your comments on the nature of this phenomenon are insightful.

This seems like quite a fundamental misunderstanding. At least the kind of buddhism I practice, you never disconnect or “no longer feel guilt” or anything like this. Yeah, during Zazen we sit in equanimity with such feelings, but that’s very different to living that way all the time (which is impossible unless you’re some kind of psycho to begin with).

Yes it is a misunderstanding. "spiritual bypass" is not considered a positive term or a correct understanding of the dharma. It is a term used by those who believe in right living and is applied to those who have reached certain attainment but who do not maintain right living. At least that is my understanding of the term.

> but that’s very different to living that way all the time (which is impossible unless you’re some kind of psycho to begin with).

If you are not trying to do zazen off the cushion you aren't putting in right effort. You should be aiming to manifest non-discriminating mind at all times

I disagree about right effort, but I’m just an amateur anyway so don’t listen to me :)

I don’t think this means you dont feel sad or angry or even jealous or anything else. It means, when you’re sad, just be sad. Don’t be too sad about being sad.. :)

You should always be practising.

As for the other stuff, it's about not identifying with your thoughts. Sad thoughts can still arise, you just don't grab it and say "that's me"

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