Comment by firtoz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by firtoz | Hacker News Reader

When we focus we do not really focus.

For example, while we eat, we get all kinds of thoughts, and we can easily get lost in them. Planning about the future, thinking about the past. We can get lost in our mind and our thoughts carry us around.

This is our default mode.

With meditation, we can learn to focus on what we are doing much more precisely than "typical" focus that we think is focusing, but the typical one we consider mainly "what we think our body is actively doing". We do not typically consider what's going on in the mind.

With meditation, we can learn to let go of the thoughts in our mind, so that we do not get dragged around this way or that way easily.

Training the mind is a skill that one learns over months and years.

When I meditate, I deliberately let the thoughts pass, and every session of meditation trains me to automatically be able to do it during my daily activities.

So when I am eating, I am only eating, with my body, but also my mind. When I am relaxing, I am truly relaxing. When I am thinking about something, I am truly thinking about only that thing.

> When we focus we do not really focus.

How do you know that?

How do you measure and decide if you focus enough?

You can measure how many times you get distracted, and how far do you get dragged. This is very easy to do during meditation.

Yes, but who decides the standard here?

I am distracted 5 times a minute. Is it good enough or should I continue practicing?

And in the end - why is this a bad thing, to be distracted? If it’s in our nature in the first place?

I’m not being sarcastic - I truly want to know the deep answers from someone knowledgeable, but didn’t find any answers yet.

You decide what you are comfortable with :) however in general we can roughly decide if someone is struggling or not.

There are no "right and deep answers" for questions like this.

It comes down to “why do I need to decide at all in the first place?” So why?

I see that you too are interested in philosophy ;)

Everyone has their reason to be interested in meditation.

The original Buddha was simply "not satisfied" and wanted to know why. So he discovered the causes and effects and removers of dissatisfaction in itself.

Part of his discovery that dissatisfaction comes from within, from all of the thoughts that poke us, especially when we let them to affect us.

Mindfulness meditation is only part of the puzzle of Buddhism.

I’m not trying to be philosophical here.

I’m trying to find those personal specific seeds that drove people to meditation.

Judging by the comments here - there are not that much. Most just repeat common mass media Knowledge about meditation.

Although some comments feel deeply personal, this is why I try to find more evidence, not just put a label on this meditation thing.

My seed was very personal too.

I had been overly self critical most of my life, and that made me unhappy. Additionally, I had a friend tell me that I had "too much ego". I did some research on "how to reduce your ego", and Buddhism appeared on my radar. I explored deeper, and started practicing. It showed me not to get too attached to a lot of the thoughts that I was very attached to. I was also very attached to a particular kind of self worth. I realised that I did have too much ego, not necessarily like the typical form of narcissism, but I was still too "self-centred", except instead of the "self-loving" narcissism, I was the "self-blaming" kind.

With meditation I learned not to pay too much attention to some of the thoughts, which helped calm me down. My complete solution did involve more than meditation, though, I went to therapy as well. Meditation feels more like a kind of "supplement" rather than a cure-all, tbh.

Thank you for sharing that seed. Yes, I definitely feel some therapeutic role of it.

For me it had two elements, an increasing dissatisfaction as I got older and realized none of the "standard" things that were supposed to make me happy (possessions, status, etc.) were really making me feel good, and pure curiosity.

Meditation is an experience. If you have the experience and enjoy it, you will keep doing it.

Some people are drawn to the spiritual and it isn’t if I do this X amount then I get Y.

Meditation is an overloaded term, and one of the overloads is (IMO) from people who are practicing a symptom of a more aware mind without knowing the goal.

Others above and below have pointed out a few great points about “meditation” that I find relevant:

- It serves to introduce a delay between stimulus and action

- It gives you the time to discover subconscious thoughts that you haven’t noticed prior that may be causing negative emotions like anxiety

I personally meditate by taking the time to think extensively about things people say to me and things I feel when I’m not in some urgent situation. Also, my extremely supportive and mindful wife and therapist are highly involved in this and I’d never have found success without them. I have a history of anger and anxiety issues. The mindfulness I describe has been my ticket out of the personal impulsive hell I built into my early 30s. Others discovered their ticket via meditation of the breathing, etc.

For me, meditation is sitting at my desk, sometimes idly and sometimes not, contemplating everything I feel, why I feel it, if it’s valid, what others feel, what my goals are (most important part), what my next steps toward those goals are (other most important part), etc.

Hope this is insightful. I think meditation is a very weakly defined term in the US.

It's not a bad thing, it's just not as good of a thing. You want the benefits of meditating? Meditate. You don't want them? Than don't.

The bar is where you set it for yourself. And that's part of the point - complete internal reflection, rather than awaiting someone else's instructions and/or approval.

> And in the end - why is this a bad thing, to be distracted? If it’s in our nature in the first place?

But is it indeed in our nature? That comment assumes: if a condition exists, then that condition is correct. But, for example, it's in our nature to overload on sugar and fats, but that's not a healthy way to live.

You want that capability to separate yourself from thoughts that are intrusive or that you don't wanna think. I like the metaphor of sticky thoughts. Oftentimes, thoughts that aren't good for us drive us. But what we really want is to be able to snap out of them and identify them for what they are. Meditating is just learning to notice things that go on inside your head or around you. You're training your nervous system. See https://rightasrain.uwmedicine.org/mind/well-being/science-b... or any other hit on google for "meditation parasympathetic nervous system". You're learning to regulate yourself basically.

> we can learn to focus on what we are doing much more precisely than "typical" focus that we think is focusing

Is that different from the kind of focus during strenuous exercise?

During some kind of exercise, or anything that gets you into the "flow zone", is not really that different indeed.

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