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The new science of meditation

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249 pointsojarow380 comments

I've practiced mindfulness and meditation for many years until I found "The Tao of Pooh", which, if you're not familiar, outlines the basic tenets of taoism. It has completely changed me and made me feel whole for the first time in my life, and I don't have to practice anything to achieve it.

Early on in my life I was drawn in by proverbs and other pieces of wisdom, in an attempt to fill in the gaps of what I thought was missing, to fix myself and make me feel whole. Then mindfulness presented itself to me and it gave me a feeling that everything just worked - it was simple and applied to everything; but I couldn't hold onto it. I wanted to just be, and be ok. Non-dual mindfulness felt like the answer to that problem, but while it sounded right in theory, I still felt that it was something I had to achieve or maintain.

When I read The Tao of Pooh, everything clicked for me. I could be myself without trying. My whole life has become open-ended. It also helped me to understand something that always nagged at me - how could some people appear to be mindful from birth, without having read anything about mindfulness? - People who seemed to always grow and learn in a way that upends their nature continually (nature vs. nurture?), while I felt that there was always something I was missing.

The answer(for me) was 2 things -an ability to see myself as whole, despite the capacity for personal growth; -and complete/lazy faith in my intuition.

(Intuition being this kind of thing that everyone is born with - and so in my view, the only thing that could transcend the differences between every living being. The differences in access to teachings, wisdom, philosophies, religion, culture, etc.)

I'm curious if anyone here has felt similar with meditation/mindfulness, or has had experience with both that and taoism and what that journey was like for you.

Sadly the Tao of Pooh does not outline the basic tenets of Daoism. As van Norden says in the chapter on the Daodejing in his Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy:

> The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff ... is a charming work that has attained a wide readership. There is nothing wrong with enjoying it for itself. But it reveals much more about how the Daodejing as been appropriated to illustrate Western Romanticism than it does about the Daodejing itself. (See later in this section for more on Romanticism).

and, later on, here's what he has to say about the appropriation of the Daodejing and Daoism for Romanticism:

> We see a similar trend in the West. In particular, contemporary Westerners often project onto the Daodejing the assumptions of Romanticism. In reaction against the emphasis on reason that was characteristic of the Enlightenment, Romanticism championed the importance and wisdom of one's passions. But the dichotomy of reason and passion is Western, not Chinese, and the individualism characteristic in some forms of Romanticism is quite alien to the Daodejing. Consequently, we should be on the lookout for how Romantic preconceptions can distort our appreciation of the text.

Sadly, there's not many good non-academic introductions to Daoism out there, and the most popular translation - Stephen Mitchell's - was done by someone who can't even read Classical Chinese, but thought his Zen teaching was a 'good enough' guide to allow him to translate it.

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All this is to say I'm glad the book worked for you, and helped you find peace. It's just not Daoism (nor is Alan Watts!)

What would you recommend as an introduction to Daoism, even if academic?

I am not an expert on the subject but IMO Taoism has a very similar phenomenon to Buddhism (and indeed all religions or popular philosophies really) in that the “classical”, original, core teachings are pretty different from the organized later movements under the same name. So the context - philosophical, historical, sociological, spiritual - in which you approach the subject and whether you’re doing so on the basis of the original thing or its more organized movements might make it so people interested in it under different contexts both think the other is ignorant or incorrect.

I haven’t read the Tao of Pooh myself but I want to point this out because I think it’s possible to understand Taoism (the classical philosophy) and concepts like Wu-wei without necessarily knowing anything about Neidan and or “Taoist Magic”

This is fine though. All of these things, including the original sources, are philosophies as product of the time they were written. Ie. It makes sense for them to change as the society around them changes.

If one guy reads the Tao of Pooh and it helps him 'be' — that is the point. Laozi would likely agree: don't overthink it.

>If one guy reads the Tao of Pooh and it helps him 'be' — that is the point. Laozi would likely agree: don't overthink it.

That's still a Western way to see it.

For Laozi that wouldn't "be the point". The point of his teaching was not to help people "be" in any which way, but to be in a particular way, within a certain philosophy of the world and our duties in it.

Personally, if you're interested in the early 'philosophical' side (which I don't think can - or should - be disentangled from the 'religious' side; the separation of religion and philosophy is inherently a post-Enlightenment, Western phenomenon, and doesn't really apply outside that cultural situation), van Norden's chapters on the DDJ and the ZZ in his book I quoted from above are a good start. But there was a 'religious' tint to a lot of this, even very early on.

If you're more open to how the three strands ('religious', 'philosophical' and 'literary') of Daoism have merged and mingled throughout history, I really like Ronnie Littlejohn's Daoism: An Introduction published by I.B. Taurus. It's essentially an introductory textbook, but does a good job at showing how these things have always been interacting (indeed, there's quite possibly Nedian references in the DDJ/ZZ/LZ!) and that trying to separate them really isn't possible (indeed, as said, it's an inherently modern, Western distinction between 'philosophy' and 'religion'), while looking at how they've changed over time.

Oh I forgot to mention Coutinho's An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies, which looks at the three early Daoist texts -- the Laozi, the Zhuangzi, and the Liezi. I haven't read it yet, but have heard decent things. He specifically works from a comparative perspective as well, which makes it more interesting.

Hoh hoh! Have you not heard that that dao which has a recommended introduction is not the true dao?

The 'no true libertarian' problem all over again lol

The Tao Te Ching itself is the best introduction to philosophical Taoism (the religion is something else). Perhaps certain passages can be obscure, but they reveal their meaning in time.

Take a look for yourself https://terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html

The dichotomy between 'philosophical' and 'religious' Daoism is ahistorical, and stems from the influence, especially, of the Jesuits. They were tied together and mixed together from the beginning, especially neidan traditions.

Yes, there's two words - but they were often used interchangeably.

Wow thank you for this! I suppose that's what the answer could have been for me, a kind of bridging between my lifelong reverence and pursuit of reason, and the passion or intuition that I didn't understand in others or myself.

I'm still early into reading the James Legge translation, but I've heard that there are many interpretations of the original. Is the tao of pooh not even close to daoism then?

Not OP and it's been a long time since I've read the Tao of Pooh, but from what I recall it's alright, but it really doesn't cover much of the real meat of Taoism. Much like Alan Watts, it provides an interesting philosophy, possibly even a helpful one, but it's not Daoism. Like watching an American re-make of a foreign movie :)

I'd be a bit wary of older translations[0] and try to get a reputable new one if you can. I recommend either Thomas Cleary's[1] or Victor Mairs; the latter was made based off the oldest copy of the Tao Te Ching we've found so far and includes a lot of interesting historical background.

If you want a more historical look I recommend Early Daoist Scriptures by Stephen Bokenkamp, which is fascinating if a little dry. There's also The Taoist Body by Kristofer Schipper which goes into how Taoism is practiced in modern Taiwan: Kristofer was actually ordained as a Taoism priest and learned many rituals supposedly wiped out in China during the Cultural Revolution.

[0] I think Legge's translation is actually alright, but it was really a crap-shoot back then. Infamously, Richard Wilhelms translation of "The Secret of the Golden Flower" is said by some to be so badly done as to in some parts convey the exact opposite of what the text says.

[1] Thomas Clearly (who was also the biggest critic of Wilhelms translation, for context) published a collection of his TTC and Chuang Tzu translations as one book, The Essential Tao, if you're looking to read the latter too. I highly recommend it

I like the movie metaphor, some turn out to be very different from the original and I don't always like that.

This seems like a great list you've compiled, thank you. The deeper dives you've recommended sound very interesting too. I think I'll bookmark this

I quite liked Thomas Merton's translations.

Perhaps the Tao of Pooh is better than the original Taoism, or is an improvement.

If you like TOP better, or think it's more correct, or more wise, that's fine.

(I don't think so, but someone else might.)

I also strongly disagree with some of the sibling comments which insist that Taoism does not have a non-mystical (i.e., non-religious) core. As a disclaimer, I'm not really an expert. But I can see that there is a wise and rational framework there, that does not depend on make believe.

>Sadly the Tao of Pooh does not outline the basic tenets of Daoism.

I mean, one would surely expect a certain amount of straying from scholarly excellence and some limits to its historical accuracy on the subject, given the book features Winnie-the-Pooh...

Reminds me of how "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" has nothing to do with zen.

"Not very factual on motorcycles, either" : )

would you mind elaborating? it's been for years on my book list. but if it is neither about zen nor about motorcycles on a meaningful level then i can probably remove it.

I know virtually nothing about Daoism, but I know a lot about Christian theology and there is not agreement on what Christian belief _is_. It gets even funnier when we compare Christian theology and its interpretations of the Old Testament to Jewish theology and its interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (which Christians made their Old Testament).

So, who decides what Daoist belief _is_? And isn't?

>there is not agreement on what Christian belief _is_

this isn't true at all. It's quite simply an Abrahamic religion based around following the teachings of Jesus Christ. There are plenty of different doctrines and interpretations but you can tell what is and isn't a Christian church.

Same thing with Daoism. Daoism is both a religion and a philosophy with very specific teachings and traditions. You can argue about how to interpret it, but that's not what pop philosophy books like The Tao of Pooh are doing.

> It's quite simply an Abrahamic religion based around following the teachings of Jesus Christ.

First off, that's not true.

Second, your argument is tautological: Daoism is a path based around following the tenets of the Dao; Confucianism is a path based around following the teachings of Confucius; Buddhism is a path based around following the teachings of Buddha.

Even if it were true, it wouldn't mean anything.

> There are plenty of different doctrines and interpretations but you can tell what is and isn't a Christian church.

Are Mormons Christian? Lots of Christians don't think so.

Are Catholics Christian? Lots of Christians don't think so (despite the Roman Catholic Church being the largest Christian church).

You're assuming agreement that does not exist.

> Same thing with Daoism. Daoism is both a religion and a philosophy with very specific teachings and traditions.

Christianity does _not_ have specific teachings and traditions.

Catholicism has very specific teachings and traditions. It's a huge church and they've got tons of groups and committees and panels to write books about what Real Christians™ must believe and how they must behave. And they kick out people who are vocal about disobeying.

But of course, non-Catholic churches have different teachings and traditions. Not that they agree, either. If you wander around the Southern US, you'll find tons of Christian churches that are each just a few dozen people, and their teachings and traditions can be unique.

So if Daoism is like Christianity, then there isn't agreement.

If Daoism has specific teachings and traditions, then how is that maintained? Who decides (or decided) what those teachings and traditions are?

> >there is not agreement on what Christian belief _is_

> this isn't true at all.

Yes, it is.

> It's quite simply an Abrahamic religion based around following the teachings of Jesus Christ.

That's not even the most common of the competing ideas, in part because it is useless because it just pushes the lack of consensus out one level because there is no consensus on what, if anything, are “the teachings of Jesus Christ”.

There is a broad consensus among the theologians of communities making up the vast majority of self-described Christians on what thr boundaries of Christianity are, but it excludes a fair number of other self-descibed Christians, and even common members of those communities often have narrower definitions.

> but you can tell what is and isn't a Christian church.

Lots of people “can tell”, but they won’t agree. Where its important to a discussion, people who are careful will define the term as it applies to the specific discussion. There is no one true right answer separate from specific context of usage. (This is true of language generally, but its especially true of trying to do binary in/out boundaries of communities or other spaces with near-continuous variation.)

Why should anyone care what van Norden has to say on the subject anymore than anyone else? Anyone who adopts an idea to paint themselves an “authority” on it shouldn’t be trusted, especially in this domain.

van Norden is an award-winning scholar who has dedicated his entire life to classical Chinese philosophy. He has taught the subject at universities for decades. I think his PhD earns him the privilege of being seen as more of an authority on this particular subject than Benjamin Hoff, whose credentials are a BA in Asian art and learning a Japanese version of Qigong as a hobby.

None of that means anything. Classical != right/accurate/useful. That mindset just gives authority to age, which does not correlate.

I’ve had a similar experience with Taoism. It is a kind of tough nut to crack coming from Western cultures what with our extensive theologies, holy books, and prescriptivist religions. I highly recommend “The Way of Chuang Tzu” by Thomas Merton.

Perhaps this betrays some fundamental ignorance on my part, but I think understanding and internalizing the Taoist mindset makes meditation a little less relevant or necessary. Taoism IMO is the sublime wisdom of not attempting to be wise (usually manifesting as inane and unnuanced rules, or clever-sounding quotes) and not neuorotically attempting to conform to practices or ways of thinking forced on us by culture, tradition, ideology, etc. Meditation and mindfulness help incrementally in that pursuit but they are like climbing rungs of a ladder next to an elevator that Zhuangzi built for us.

> Meditation and mindfulness help incrementally in that pursuit but they are like climbing rungs of a ladder next to an elevator that Zhuangzi built for us.

It’s critical to note that not all paths/forms of meditation involve climbing rungs of a ladder or really any notion of a path whatsoever.

The practice of sitting is only for the purpose of training the mind to focus, which helps some people reach the “non-dual” state more effectively.

For example, the Dzogchen approach relies more on directly pointing out aspects of experience in a way that brings the listener more directly into contact with the current moment/unfolding experience and towards the same state that “ladder” meditation approaches aim to reach.

Many of the modern western teachers have gravitated to a more direct approach as well because it’s more palatable to the audience here (and frankly, far more practical and immediately useful).

Mentioning this because the perception that there’s a steep and long journey ahead is not necessary, and has turned plenty of interested people away from the idea of trying.

With all of that said, I haven’t explored Taoism, and it sounds interesting.

That’s very fair, as a kind of meditation-skeptic I probably too aggressively dismissed and mischaracterized it.

The Tao Te Ching itself isn’t prescriptive at all with meditation and the only time it really comes up is in a reference to a breathing exercise, which you could just as well interpret as a one-off for the excerpt rather than formal or ideologically sanctioned meditation. In later early Taoist texts meditation (particularly breathing exercises) was promoted as a way of cultivating various beneficial forces internally, rather than as a linear path to salvation or anything. But then even later they start getting into the Taoism stuff I don’t care for like meditation as a way of becoming immortal lol. Personally I think it’s possible to read the classical texts and come away thinking the Tao doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with, positively or negatively, with meditation.

I think of OG Taoism as a kind of deconstructivist reaction to Chinese culture at the time - highly political, rigidly Confucian - and defining itself more by where it disagreed with the contemporary schools of thought than by what it promoted. While it’s not contradictory to say meditation is compatible with Taoism, any kind of strong rules or expectations about meditation would contradict with early Taoism just on the basis of specifying some kind of rigid understanding of meditation or prescriptive rules about such a complex thing (because that would be very Confucian).

+1 on the Merton translation recommendation.

That's exactly how I feel about it, you just put it in better words.

Thank you for the recommendation

I picked up the Tao Te Ching in middle school and would reread it frequently. The personal insights would evolve as I grew up and faced different issues in my life. I found an abiding peace in those personal insights and they have held with me since. One of those insights is something like having instead of seeking as an identity. I don’t feel that I want to seek to find myself or some great answer, it’s already there, I already have it. YMMV bits a wonderful ancient text. I recommend the S. Mitchel translation.

I could never get into the sitting and breathing kind of meditation, but I do find different times I am able to practice very meditative activities such as walking in the woods, aimless wandering, puttering about with no intention just taking in the world. I used to do zen inspired landscape photography and that whole process felt very meditative to me.

I think meditation is similar to physical exercise which you need to do a little bit frequently, to stay healthy.

You don't need to do sports but if you stop walking altogether your physical health deteriorates. Your joints get arthritic.

So the goal of meditation should not be some Cosmic Epiphany Truth or Satori or Nirvana or Samadhi. Those come and go. The goal is to keep your mind healthy, to get the toxins out of it by doing meditation not too much not too little.

You do not need to sit down to mediate. That is the biggest myth. I mediate while going about my day.

> You do not need to sit down to mediate.

I find that if I try to mediate standing up I come across as aggressive.

Some things are better done in private, because some people don't get what you're doing and feel fazed or threatened by it, for whatever reason, typically ignorance or intolerance.

Right, it is a myth.

There's a lot of misinformation floating around about the subject.

Basically, any activity can be a meditation. So can no activity, e.g. zazen.

I hope you don’t mean literal toxins, because that would be total nonsense

Hmm, I guess I am one of those folks who are complete without knowing why or how, or maybe I do but cant be sure. At least for past decade and a half, before that I was just a big useless lost child (I see big children around a lot, some are nearing retirement).

Definitely no nurture, an average guy with slightly above average mind raised in former communist bloc, if that means anything to you (kids raised as obedient workers, no critical thinking, no strive for greatness, little self sufficiency and other real life skills, thank you soviet fucking russia union for destroying not only my parents lives and dreams). What I achieved in my life is beyond wildest dreams of my humble parents, but they had a nano fraction of my options.

One thing I have is self-discipline but that may not be related. Or maybe non trivial consumption of weed over past 2 decades in right moments.

I can empty my mind completely with a snap of a finger, and keep it so if I wish. Mindfulness is utterly boring to me as it does nothing since I am there on my own without even trying, just gets me very sleepy and decreases my heart rate to the point of being cold.

Mild extreme sports make the 'feeling whole' part work. Currently probably rock climbing is #1 with a great buddy (american teacher), followed by my eternal struggle to get finally proficient at paragliding. Small kids give a lot of other fulfilment and take away easy sleep and some mental stability, thats a mixed blessing to be polite.

just a few thoughts. it is possible that your discovery of mindfulness and meditation was essential to understand this tao of pooh and make it work for you.

i also notice that there are people who seem to be blessed with a natural ability to be mindful. those people also tend to be charismatic, happy most of the time, full of intrinsic motivation and energy. all those things i'm not ... lol. my understand is that those people experienced no or only mild childhood trauma and grew up with strong and loving bonds to their parents and siblings. this idea is founded on my readings of dr gabor mate. those people do not carry any pain or if they do they have very well developed mental strategies to mange it. if you don't - like me again - then you will always have an inclination to distract yourself from yourself and your emotional experience - the opposite of mindfulness. as a matter of fact this distraction is becoming the default mental strategy to cope with this always present nagging nervousness and irritation. #adhd

It sounds like a book title that would be super banned in the homeland of Taoism…

> or has had experience with both that and taoism and what that journey was like for you.

When I was in early high school/late middle school, I stumbled upon the Tao Te Ching at the local library. I remembered not understanding much, and the only memory I have left is the peculiar, tai-ji like visual symmetry of the first two (Chinese) sentences (it was one of those books with the source one one side, and a translation on the next). Which definitely sparked a fierce interest in Chinese language/culture.

Other books like the Art of War were a breeze of fresh air: so much common sense.

Zen is also partly based on Taoism. I recommend Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki.

What reasons do you have to trust your intuition? Why do you happen to have a certain intuition and why is it likely to give you the right answers?

I think that there needs to be a separation of meditation's tangible benefits from both the religious associations, such as seeking nirvana or psychedelic experiences, and the social & financial ones stated in this article that either view meditation as a genuine secret superpower or are see it as a backdrop to take advantage of people simply trying to find mental peace.

My belief is that the idea Kabat-Zinn had, which is paraphrased in the article, is good. "Pay attention to the present moment, on purpose, without judgment" - stop, take some time to reflect on your feelings, process them. Maybe just take some time and not "think", where you give yourself some away time from the world. The anecdata from countless people seems to vaguely support the notion that this view on meditation works; I wouldn't call it concrete by any means, but it's as solid of a scientific start as one can get with something like meditation.

Software developers and those adjacent love to tout acronyms like "Keep It Simple, Stupid", why does the buck stop at software? The further one gets into the article, the more outlandish things get: electronic stimulation, microdosing various drugs (mentioned a lot on HN, which I've always found disturbing), cranial ultrasounds, even the stock photo of the lady meditating with a VR headset?

At the end of the piece, Laukkonen provides the following rhetorical question: "[W]hat is liberating about chasing different states of consciousness, and not enjoying the one that you have?" I think a lot of the comments here and the research presented towards the end of the article are in too deep in either side and are unable to see the forest for the trees.

This may have already been said, but many of the authors/gurus/teachers from the “Vedic” tradition emphatically state how true spiritual work should and even must be done scientifically.

The science as described involves primarily data gathered from direct observation of one’s own experience, rather than studying the external physical world.

This goes very contrary to the statistically driven science most people are familiar with, even though certain hypotheses, experiments and results can be observed in larger groups.

However, if the scientific method is applied rigorously to matters of the spirit it will yield great dividends.

I came to “spirituality” by means of almost rabid skepticism, and extreme distrust towards anything not “based in reality”, or measurable with instruments, slowly exploring and asking questions about the nature of reality.

This extreme skepticism is so important, as belief or faith is the enemy of knowing. I believe the western mind (one with developed rational thinking), when applied to areas on the frontiers of consciousness and reality is an extremely potent tool.

One can marry the logic and reason with intuition, emotion and introspection and go very far into the unknown, bringing back wisdom to enrich one’s own life, and the lives those one shares this knowledge with.

I believe that as a species we’re in the verge of discovering a whole new layer to what it means to be human conscious beings.

I’m not really sure if there is a point to this comment. Perhaps I am just excited to see spiritual inquiry happening in the mainstream, with structure and discipline.

I am sick of strict materialism, and just as sick of the ungrounded beliefs, taken in faith by people involved in the so-called “new age movement.”

When I was a homeless man, I used to go ride the bus to the end of the line, just hanging out in the seat, just waiting for it to stop and turn around, just trying to stay warm/cool.

I used to walk around at night, walk and walk, because there were precious few places to sit down and rest, and I didn't want to arouse suspicion for loitering or trespassing, so I'd just walk until I was too tired.

I used to hang out in restaurants, either on my own dime or with a charity voucher, and I'd swill coffee, and read/write or something, not with any goal in mind, just passing the time through the night, because I was homeless, unemployed, and constantly at loose ends.

And this, in a nutshell, is what you get with meditation when you divorce it from an authentic spiritual tradition.

If you don't mind sharing, how did you get off the streets?

Paid maternity leave and 30 vacations, staples of any developed country, would do more for mental health in USA than any research in meditation.

Exactly. Please see:

Buddhism as the Opiate of the (downwardly-mobile) Middle Class: The Case of Thanissaro Bhikkhu

https://speculativenonbuddhism.com/2013/07/10/buddhism-as-th...

Unfortunately, labor laws are harder to change than your perception of pain.

One of the ways I hate wasting my time is wishing we would stop using a word that has been overloaded into uselessness as if it conveyed some kind of actual meaning by itself.

The article touches vaguely upon it, but “meditation” covers so many different things, many of which are completely incompatible with each other, it’s a guarantee that discussing “meditation” leads to people thinking they are talking about something which they are not in fact talking about.

Anyway.

Excellent point. I think something like "Doing diaphragmatic breathing for 5 minutes a day where you try to focus your mind on your breath will give you certain benefits" is a lot more useful than nebulous claims about "meditation" that end up getting spun up with people's ideas about spirituality and enlightenment.

Further, there's a tendency for some people to get ecstatic about something they do - be it meditation, lifting, yoga, keto, psychedelics, etc. - and act as if everyone should be binging on it in order to live a good life. That sort of closed mindedness makes one question just how beneficial these things actually are.

Or it leads to a massive outbreak of "actually that's not really meditation, this is" discussions.

"On the one hand, I do agree that.. But on the other hand, I've come to realize that..."

i beg to differ. the more i practice and read about meditation the clearer i understand what it is and that it is something very specific definable in a single short sentence: "observing without judging". understand what that actually means takes some practice, though. but each and every school of meditation (every type of yoga, zen, mindfulness, tai chi, ...) boils down to this and only this.

one exception is the western definition of "meditation" which is more like "thinking silently". this is almost the opposite and technically more of a homonym (one word with two different meanings) and not a different interpretation. it's just something totally different which happens to be referred to with the same word.

"Along a less-traveled route, meditation remains what it long was: a deeply transformative pursuit, a devoted metamorphosis of the mind toward increasingly enlightened states."

This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for me. However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself.

As my practice has gotten deeper, I've started to reframe meditation for myself as the process of unrelenting inquiry in the search for base truth. In that pursuit, the practice becomes a process of subtraction of core beliefs and ideas that simply aren't true - or can't be known to be true. As these beliefs disappeared, much of my own personal suffering did as well as so many of the things that were sources of conflict in my mind were predicated on false beliefs.

With this framing meditation can take many forms. Ramana Maharshi famously asked his devotees to start with the question of "Who am I?" and just keep inquiring.

Could you give an example of beliefs/ideas you've let go of, or discovered can't be known to be true?

I've been trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy vs meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of false beliefs. But while there are a lot of examples of this in psychotherapy and the mechanisms are well-documented, it's hard to find first-person accounts regarding meditation that aren't just generalities. So I'd find it really valuable to hear some examples of anything concrete/practical -- of course if it's nothing too personal or private.

Psychotherapy works on the "self": your problems, your history.

One of the aims of mediation is to gradually understand that this self is really an illusion, hence there are in fact no problems and no history. Past does not really define who you are, and problems are only problems if you think reality should be different that what it currently is the moment you experience it (which is of course totally impossible. What you can do is alter the future though.)

Now don't get me wrong this self is in fact a very useful interface for interacting with others, etc. The problem is believing this interface, or layer we add on top on experiences really is us, while it's really just a useful concept to navigate the world.

We are all mostly a bunch of habits: this stimuli gives this response because we trained our mind to function this way, were raised that way, live within country X, etc. It's all just mind formatting. Meditation aims to discover this for yourself, which should leads you to train in developing new, more wholesome habits, which will make you and others suffer less. Then since you are mostly habits, you gradually change, and become much saner as times goes by. Saner because you're living more in adequation with reality.

So in a way, psychotherapy can be seen as a dead end for someone who practices meditation. Although it certainly has its uses, even for very advanced meditators who can also develop blind spots without seeing them (more work needed, but psychotherapy can be a useful mirror there).

> One of the aims of mediation is to gradually understand that this self is really an illusion

Yes this is a standard Buddhist (and not even exclusively Buddhist) point, and I'd say it's basically correct, but the problem is that it can, and has been understood in dozens of ways. Some more profound than others, and plenty contradicting one another.

Let me give a fairly psychological interpretation. One of our major cognitive functions is to create and maintain an automatic, pre-verbal map of the world, at the center of which stands a mapped entity labeled "ME". Let's call it the "self-representation". This is in itself fine and dandy, and quite useful; it gives us a sense of being an integrated organism through time, and lets us say things like "yesterday I went swimming". More troublingly, it's also the subject of our self-esteem, and of most of our hopes and worries.

The map, with our self-representation in the center, is not the only thing in our awareness - we're also able to attend to stimula and feel our emotions in the here and now. The problem, and the only problem as far as radical Buddhism is concerned, is that our sense of being is most of the time entirely fused with this self-representation. It becomes the entirely of who I am to myself. (Hence Ramana Maharshi's super direct path: inquire within "who am I").

What meditation does, by slowing down the whole mechanism, is to allow us to feel that there is more to me, here and now, than this running self-representation. By insistently putting our attention away from it, we temporally and partially unfuse from the self-representation. We get little breaks from it, where it either it mostly just stops for a while, or it becomes something I see happening, rather than something I am. And if I can see it happening, I can also train myself to not give it so much importance.

The result is a much vaster inner perspective, and a sense of deeper presence - for a few moments at least. But, usually, the moment the meditator notices these changes happening, the most automatic reaction is for the self-representation to rise back up as the one who wants to own that. HEY, INTERESTING STUFF IS HAPPENING TO ME!!! And there you go go crashing again into stuffy ordinary consciousness.

Hence the usual advice you will hear from good meditation teachers: getting experiences if often easy, but not running after them can take years and years of practice.

That seems like a fantastic explanation -- can I ask a couple of questions, since you seem to be able to explain so well?

Because I've never found much success with meditation, but the split between present-experience and self-representation has always seemed... well, easy to me. This idea of them being "fused" is only something I discovered in discussions around meditation. But then that makes me wonder if I misunderstand it.

Conceptually, I can understand the present-experience meditation aims at as simply experiencing the senses. Which I'll do sometimes, especially outside in nature. It's nice. I've never had any trouble quieting down my thoughts, as long as I'm not in an immediately stressful situation.

But it's also never "changed" me in any way. It doesn't make me feel like there's "more to me", nor does it feel like it's some kind of desperately needed respite from my self-representation. I rather like the challenges of everyday life. Even if they're not "so important", it gives me meaning and purpose in a way that, well, I can't find any comparable meaning or purpose in focusing solely on present-experience.

So I guess my question is, am I missing some aspect of meditation? Am I misunderstanding something here? Because what I've been struggling to understand is why letting go of self-representation is seen as good or a goal. You're left with your sensory experience, but I don't understand what's meant to be so profound about that. It's never led me to any ethical realizations the way reading moral philosophy has, nor has it led me to any therapeutic realizations the way psychotherapy has -- nor do I really understand the mechanism by which it could. But I feel like I might be missing a piece of the puzzle?

Similarities and differences in perspective:

"...you were taught in [Jesus]... to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." -- Ephesians 4:20-24

"[O]ur mind is trained to function this way in response to some stimuli" vs "our old self is corrupted through deceitful desires". The former sounds non-judgemental, but by saying that this realization should "lead you to develop new, more wholesome habits, in adequation with reality, which make you and others suffer less", it's implying that the previous habits were unwholesome (cf "corrupt"), not in adequation with reality (cf "deceitful") and made you and others suffer more.

I think insofar as psychotherapy is reluctant to discard bits of the "[old] self", the two perspectives would agree that it's a dead end.

I do have to say, personally I like the sound of having a "new self, created after the likeness of God" better than "realizing I'm just a bundle of habits, then replacing some habits with better ones." :-)

> I do have to say, personally I like the sound of having a "new self, created after the likeness of God" better than "realizing I'm just a bundle of habits, then replacing some habits with better ones." :-)

To me, the "new self vs old self" framing is just more abstract. You should do what works for you, but I think breaking down one's identity into a set of habits or responses is simply a higher resolution of the same.

Meditation and therapy aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, for people who have traumas, I would say both are necessary. Very few meditation teachers are trained in handling a psychological crisis and mental break downs happen often in retreats and self-led practice.

This very much aligns with my experience.

Meditation helps me be with what is and remember that I’m ok.

Therapy helps me permanently untangle the thoughts and feelings that lead to distress in the first place.

They both complement each other and provide benefits that can’t be found in either alone. Meditation seems universally useful. Therapy somewhat less so, but still a powerful tool. If you’re not dealing with trauma, a good friend/mentor can provide the same feedback.

To be clear, there are many types of meditation, each with its own goal (or none at all). Some of them are "merely" relaxation exercises, but that is also something that is very much needed in today's world.

For me, it was about confronting deliberate self deception. In my mind I always told myself that "I dont have time to exercise", when the truth was, I was too lazy to exercise.

While I was meditating, this profound clarity came to me, it wasn't a case of a tyranny-like self-harming disclipinary action about my deliberate self deception, it was more like a great washing of positive emotion that framed exercise as "this is healthy for you, and it's only a few minutes a day and you can totally do it"

The textual description I gave does disservice to the actual feeling because my vocabulary is too poor to express it - but this wash-over of carity and positive emotion shifted my perspective and turned my relationship with exercise from this adversarial enemy to something more like our need for air or food - it's a healthy part of being an organic lifeform, and just like (good) food, it is pleasurable act of regeneration.

I think part of what holds people back is that meditation is like any other skill and practice is required, in this dopamine-hacked instant gratification society if there isn't instant results or even quick results people give up (I certainly did) -- I didn't start seeing the benefits of meditation until well after a month of practicing an hour every day, and up until then, it felt like a waste of time, which caused me to abort a few times before I forced the self discipline to stick with it.

An hour day seems like a high threshold (I'm not saying it is, just my perception).

Are there diminishing returns pas 15 minutes or 30 minutes etc?

It takes me 15-20 minutes just to switch my mind from "alert problem solving" mode to meditative state in sync with body - and get my breathing right.

I guess everyone is different, for me the practice was looking for guidance and then finding what works for me - one of the first things I had to let go was rigid time schedules, "THIS IS MY 15 MINUTE WINDOW FOR MEDIATETION LET ME SET AN ALARM SO I CAN GET BACK TO WORK" is not a very constructive attitute to regeneration and healing.

I suspect me saying above "Get results after more than a month" instead of hearing "I need to stick to this for a while" people hear "I will definitly get results in 1 month, here let me mark it on my calander [GET RESULTS HERE]" where it doesn't work like that. Maybe you need more healing than I did, maybe you need less. Maybe breathing is important because of how it intertwines with your exercise schedule (or lack thereof), or maybe you need silence or darkness. Maybe you need music. Maybe you need white noise.

The only common thread is that meditation is a personal journey, so listen to your body, try to avoid any preconcieved notions and expectations of results, timeframes and experiement with a few different things until you find what works for you...

I don't meditate, but I do introspect a lot. I often do so on walks. And I find I must give myself at least 10-15 minutes to even get into that mode, to stop worrying about what's actually happening or about to happen or did happen and to be able to let my mind wander and explore things deeply. So I force myself to continue until I reach the point where I'm no longer trying to convince myself to give it up and go home because there's something else I want to do so badly.

After that point, it's up to my subconscious. I'll stop when I feel like it, when I feel satisfied. That could be anywhere from 10 more minutes to another hour. But the longest part is always the beginning. The second part never feels like time is passing - it's exactly what I want to be doing.

Of course, if I only have 15 minutes, there's no guarantee I'm going to reach a place of satisfaction. I would aim to set aside 30-45 minutes whenever possible. I often see "do X for 1 hour a day" and that's just not realistic for everyone. You can definitely get good results with less time investment. But in general, yes you'll get out of it what you put in. I don't walk every single day and I noticeably suffer for it.

> trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy vs meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of false beliefs.

I think mediation is more about getting rid of all beliefs temporarily.

Beliefs are just language playing around in the echo-chamber of your mind. Having too much noise in an echo-chamber can be distracting and stressful and can make you not hear what you should be hearing.

Meditation stops (or slows down) your thoughts. Then you realize you are just fine even if you don't repeat certain thoughts or variations of them in your brain.

Imagine you are a soldier. Enemy-attack is eminent. It can make you fearful. But that is only because you are imagining the different possible terrible effects of the enemy attack on you.

It is unlikely that all the bad things you imagine about will happen. But imagining them has a detrimental effect of your mind. Mediation helps counter that.

But you shouldn't stay in meditation forever you're supposed to come out of it so you can tackle the real life problems with a well rested mind which is better equipped to perceive the world as is, than a person in an echo-chamber would.

Ramana Maharshi says anything transient is false

CBT and other psychotherapies challenge X or Y as false

There is no reason why he should be taken as an authority. "anything transient is false" is wrong at so many levels.

I believe since Maharshi was a practitioner of hinduism for him "the self" (what they call Atman) was to be seen in all things, and the same everywhere.

So anything transient cannot be the self, hence is an illusion, or false.

But yes i also believe it's quite wrong ^^

Not disagreeing, but it's also correct on some levels.

> This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for me. However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself.

Interesting, after a certain point you get diminishing returns and once you've eliminated or solved the things conflicting you, then staying in a meditative state becomes an illusory trap to avoid life and living.

I knew a guy who did just that. Would spend hours meditating to the point where he avoided living. It seemed to be more like avoidance rather than being able to enjoy the gift of living without the troubles that come with it which meditation solves.

Interesting take. With this line of thinking would Buddhist monks just be practicing excessive escapism much like those who turn to drugs and alcohol?

Just some random thoughts but there seems to be a reoccurring theme in life in which too much of a good thing is indeed too much. Life is about balance, all that meditating and no action does what exactly? What good is all that enlightenment if you aren't experiencing life or helping others?

Usually drug and alcohol addiction ends up hurting other people and being a drain on social safety nets, right?

I guess if the monks can live cheaply and not bother anyone, it's fine. It's not for me, though.

Maybe but not always. Some of those Buddhist monks still enjoy a few earthly pleasures albeit at levels that appear quite modest to us.

Turns out a lot of humans bond over mutually shared grasping, so it can make you 'not fun at parties' when they're harrumphing about things that Do. Not. Matter. and are put off by you not dog-piling.

Most people wonder how the Dalai Lama can be so serene. I wonder how he can be so approachable.

It sounds like you may be dealing with growing pains: moving on from old relationships and social scenes you've matured past.

Can’t pick my family, neighbors or colleagues. Can’t control my friends’ friends, or people who I share hobbies with. They are who they are and I can deal with them or isolate.

I've always sort of intuitively done this since I was a kid (https://zchry.org/words/questioning-my-quantum-leap-an-ongoi...). I have zero experience with meditation in the traditional sense but I'm really interested in going down that path next as I try to broaden my scope.

I used to play a game as a kid where I'd close my eyes and try not to see or imagine anything. To keep a black empty universe as the only thing I see, for as long as possible. It isn't easy!

I did the same as a kid. Like if I was in a classroom with noisy classmates ("study hall") I'd shut my eyes and actively try to not hear them and embrace the nothingness "around" the voices. Kinda interesting that I have distinct memories of doing this _years_ before I was ever exposed to "meditation".

IMO a lot of stuff humans have 'invented' (like meditation) are really just sort of tied to our nature as animals. I think meditation is something we're all (most?) inclined to try in some way, but then some specific geeks studied it really hard for thousands of years and turned it into what it is.

I have a similar thought experiment where I try to imagine the true essence of 'nothingness', down to even the removal of the 'idea' of nothingness and even the thought that I'm trying to imagine something. It's a weird feeling.

I do that too!

I did something similar but always tried to imagine things - shapes like cube, rotate it, move it around, slice it etc. - not easy.

I always found it odd you'd want to deprive yourself from excercising mind this way by medidating = practicing not thinking.

I believe it helped me a lot when programming and thinking about problems in general.

If that's what 10% of your brain is capable of, imagine what kinds of miracles are possible once you tap into the rest of it.

> odd you'd want to deprive yourself from excercising mind

Rest is part of exercise

Very easy for me, never managed to see or imagine anything when I closed my eyes. It's always black no matter how hard I try.

A bit tangential, but I absolutely love your blog design. Minimalistic, yet very aesthetic and unique.

Thank you!

> the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself

Fully agree although a lot of devotees of Ramana Maharshi said they fell into silence just sitting in his presence. Improbable but it would be hilarious if scientists could make little "mouna wifi hubs" where practitioners got a silence handicap by sitting around it.

In the end though, I'm also skeptical that anything about self-inquiry can be replicated by an additive approach.

There are a bunch of psychology phenomena that explain such things. No Wifi involved.

I generally find the followers to be quite suggestable by people they designated as a guru.

Can you give some examples of your false beliefs?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Brunton

For resources about Ramana Maharshi, sure, Paul Brunton was popular, but I'd first go with Arthur Osborne and/or David Godman. David has a metric ton of videos on youtube if you prefer listening to reading.

can you provide some resources to understand this "advanced" meditation? my attempts with calm/headspace etc always stop at the same theme of 'concentrate on breathing, distractions are fine'.

I wanted to understand what is out there, especially outside of these apps and folks who pursue meditation seriously.

I’ve tried Calm and Headspace, and they never really worked for me.

The “Waking Up” app has been a complete game changer. The core introductory course helped me get it for the first time, and the library of content and meditation approaches from various teachers in the app gives you a rabbit hole to explore as deeply as you want.

It’s been truly transformative, starting with the gradual realization that my thoughts are not me. If they were, who is aware of them? This isn’t just an idea, it’s something that I began to feel/understand directly, which then led to a lot less entanglement and rumination. This was just the beginning.

I definitely credit the approach in this app with making this make sense. Not affiliated, just a happy user.

Strong +1 for the Waking Up app. (I also ready the Waking Up book, and found it to be quite hit-or-miss for me. But the app is just wonderful.)

I would suggest reading the book The Mind Illuminated.

http://leighb.com/jhanas.htm

My favourite is Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond by Ajahn Brahm.

Sam Harris’ ‘Waking up’ app is good. Starts from fundamentals and teaches you about the practice.

Indeed.

Ultimately, unrelenting inquiry came to: "I am."

I’ve been meditating casually for almost 10 years, I couldn’t sit still for a minute when I started and can sit regularly for an hour now.

I still have a lot of skepticism about the sensations that other meditators describe feeling, like jhanas and profound states of tranquility and whatnot. I have experienced deeper calmness and have made some insights about my brain (eg thoughts are like a sensor organ not unlike a constantly generating LLM), but I haven’t experienced anything like the sometimes superhuman claims that come from people in this community. Naval Ravikant has claimed he can experience psychedelic states just through meditation, Nick Cammarata at OpenAI makes claims about achieving perfect equanimity and being able to feel jhanas that are better than sex but also doesn’t feel desire for it because of aforementioned equanimity. There are many others on social media who make similar claims. From the outside, all of these people seem like normal humans, maybe calmer and wiser than usual, but who still seek material comfort and the validation of others just like anyone else does.

I wonder, what do others make of these superhuman meditation claims? How does one verify that their sensations during meditation are real reflections of how the brain works and not just increasingly subtle hallucinations? If you convinced everyone that the brain has a secret mechanism to feel perfect happiness, wouldn’t a lot of people hallucinate that they’ve experienced it even if it wasn’t real?

(Been meditating for about 15 years).

I don't think the things you're describing are particularly 'superhuman.' I definitely can achieve (if that's the right word -- it's almost certainly not -- how about 'experience') psychedelic states. Everything is kind of a psychedelic state if you look at it the right way. What is your personal experience with psychedelics? I wonder if you maybe haven't done them much you might not know how to spot it.

To me, clearly, the big question of superhuman meditation claims is the claim of some people to be enlightened. I personally think there is something to it, though I don't really know exactly what it is and I'd like to learn more about it.

BTW, my experience with meditation comes mostly from (controversial Wild Wild Country guru) Osho. Sounds like you're familiar with Buddhist traditions. There are a lot of ways to meditate.

> Everything is kind of a psychedelic state if you look at it the right way.

But if everything is psychadelic then nothing is.

How do you describe the psychadelic states you achieve as being different from non-psychadelic states?

Supernatural claims made by meditators that are obviously not true are what keep me from experimenting with meditation. I don't want to mess up my brain. I value it.

All the senior meditators I know have some element of irrationality. The openness that meditation seems to promote seems to also promote a certain level of gullibility that I did not expect from them.

Obviously, an out of body experience is not really true and is just a hallucination. People have looked at these.

> Supernatural claims made by meditators that are obviously not true are what keep me from experimenting with meditation. I don't want to mess up my brain. I value it.

A religious friend went on a road trip and hiked deep into the Rocky Mountains. They experienced the awe and wonder of the landscape, and to them, this was God revealing himself to them.

Supernatural claims by meditators are interpretations of the experience, much like God-in-the-mountains is an interpretation of experience.

I held the view you’re describing for many years until I spontaneously experienced what some meditators describe while I was practicing photography out in nature.

Learning to be a better photographer by immersing myself in the environment I was in had inadvertently led me to states of presence that meditators train to achieve. This is what ultimately made me explore meditation further.

I’d be cautious about linking that openness with what you’re framing as gullability. In my own exploration, I’ve applied rigorous rational examination as I go, and while I understand why people who are predisposed to religiosity reach supernatural conclusions, that is more about each individual’s existing beliefs and the resulting framing of the experience.

Your account of an awe experience is quite common. Francis Collins had a similar experience. I am not unaware of these accounts.

I agree with much of what you said. But I also think it makes people a tad more open to irrationality after such experiences, even the knowledgeable ones.

> that is more about each individual’s existing beliefs and the resulting framing of the experience

Not disagreeing.

The human brain is far less rational than we tend to believe. Recent research indicates that we hallucinate our world: we guess what we are likely to see, based on prior experience. If wrong, our brain adjusts and reevaluates the sensory data. In some cases, we even ignore unusual experiences that do not fit into our internal model.

Senior meditators spend vast amounts of time examining their personal reality, and learn that it isn't as neat and clean as we thought. That said, some do believe in outlandish things.

Jhana and nirodha sammapati are not irrational, they have been studied by scientists during the last several years. What is irrational are the belief systems built on top of those experiences by some buddhist traditions.

Out of body experiences can be had by any person who spends enough time meditating. The teachers I work with understand that it is not a supernatural experience.

> The human brain is far less rational than we tend to believe. Recent research indicates that we hallucinate our world

All the more reason, to not take reason for granted.

> Senior meditators spend vast amounts of time examining their personal reality

They do, and my concern is they contribute no new insights, especially given the vast investments of time.

> Out of body experiences can be had by any person who spends enough time meditating

These are serious hallucinations and I am alarmed by how they are brushed aside. Most meditators think they are astral projecting. This is not examination or insight. This is delusional.

>These are serious hallucinations and I am alarmed by how they are brushed aside. Most meditators think they are astral projecting. This is not examination or insight. This is delusional.

Do you dream at night? That is a hallucination. People can learn to be aware during dream states, this is called lucid dreaming. There is nothing delusional or dangerous about that, although the experience can be terrifying for people unfamiliar with the experience.

Out of body experiences are simply a special form of lucid dream, in which your imaginal / energy body seems to be located away from your physical body. There can be a sense of the imaginary body moving. This is just dreaming involving the proprioception sense.

The term "energy" can spook skeptics like yourself. The best explanations I have read is that it is just a mentally constructed sense of the body. Your brain right now has constructed an imaginary model of your body; this can also happen in dream states.

Your body is real, your mental map of the body is not. It is yet another form of hallucination which we all experience on a daily basis. Meditators will experience various forms of "energy" as their practice deepens, and this is also totally normal and not usually harmful.

Many of the explanations and mystical claims about energy and out of body experiences are questionable of course.

The mind is way more freaky and amazing than you realize, and labeling unusual states of consciousness as "delusional" is very limiting. It's your life...

A “didactic little story” about perception and the supernatural: [0]

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

0. https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf

Bacon did it better centuries before with his idols: "And where are the testimonies from the sailors who prayed to the gods but did not return safely?"

Is your reference to New Atlantis? In reading the below article [0] I'm not certain if Wallace was going for a similar point as Bacon. But maybe you have a different interpretation.

Wallace develops his point after the story ". . . we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice."

0. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/francis-bacons-g...

Real life is a hallucination

Life being a hallucination is in fact one of the hallucinations that can be caused by meditation.

These are called derealization hallucinations and are reported in meditators.

Your're being to literal without being literal enough!

The "reality" that we experience is a predictive model of what we believe is about to happen. This is required because it takes a quite some time[1] for stimulus to be received and processed by our bodies! If we didn't have this predictive mechanism the universe would seem very strange indeed.

But but because we hallucinate our reality we get the illusion that what we experience is instantaneous in respect to the cause!

[1] depending on the circuit it can take >100 msec for a nerve signal to reach the brain, and that's not accounting for the subsequent processing

I can recommend Shinzen Young as a senior meditation teacher with a high degree of rigor. He self-consciously will use mystical language, but is also upfront about the fact that he remains agnostic. The Science of Enlightenment is the best place to start with his work.

One probably needs a bit of religiousity to be able to meditate as much as senior meditators do.

Yeah, that makes sense to me (as a somewhat religious meditator).

I disagree that a focus on something other than logic is problematic, though. I'd actually argue that all-logic-all-the-time is a sickness.

I think you just need to find something in it that makes it worthwhile. Being a productive member of society is a choice, but not the only way someone could choose to spend their time. I think in Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha the author says once someone makes real progress (reaching what he calls arising and passing away) people often feel drawn to meditate full time and may join a monastery. I probably would if I had sufficiently transformative insights that made society's goals seem pointless. I mean, you don't still play the same games or have the same goals as when you were 5. This is a process of realisation and maturity.

I think this is a misconception. I do think there’s a greater likelihood that someone with religious tendencies will pursue a path like this, but the religiosity is not the key.

Sam Harris is the polar opposite of religious, but is arguably one of the leading meditators/teachers in western culture right now. I’m as allergic to religion as someone can probably be, but I’ve gotten serious about meditation and have made it a central habit in my life, because I’ve found that it works.

The ultimate goal is to bring the “here-ness” of the present moment first experienced in meditation into ordinary waking moments as much as possible. Sitting is just a focused form of training that helps condition the mind and improve focus. When I discovered how impactful sitting was for me, it formed the motivation for deepening the practice. No religiosity here.

The non-religious/non-sectarian meditators are a rapidly growing group, and this is encouraging because the religious part was never necessary, and the perception that it is kept people like me from exploring this sooner.

No, many of the meditation practices, such as Jhana and nirodha sammapati do not require any religious beliefs at all. Of course, the skeptic is unlikely to spend the vast amount of time needed to master such skills.

I see, so you can confidently discount someone else's experience as obviously not true, especially without any real attainment yourself? That just doesn't work on so many levels.

If you're a materialist, which sounds likely to be true given the available evidence, any claims to the supernatural are disqualified by, for example, the Sagan standard.

Maybe they're running the same core epistemic engine as you: what seems to be true is true!

Irrationality and gullibility are underrated.

I've heard such explorations referred to as 'reality safari' which I love. Immersing yourself in an entirely different philosophy to really feel it from the inside, to understand it completely and intuitively.

The fear many have about attempting such things mirrors the fear of e.g. psychedelic experiences -- the fear of "never coming back". Ironically, only living through this fear is what causes the bad trip in the first place. Egos, man, egos suck.

> Ironically, only living through this fear is what causes the bad trip in the first place

Where is the evidence for this? None.

> the fear of "never coming back"

Psychedelics sound like fun, but I have seen quite a few broken people on the streets, all because of them. It's not just fear, it is a serious concern.

I went through a period of several years where I was meditating 2-3 hours a day, and during that time I had all kinds of experiences... which isn't so surprising since that's a pretty abnormal thing to do.

> I wonder, what do others make of these superhuman meditation claims?

Not much. I have no reason to be skeptical of their accounts, but they strike me as too personal to be relevant to others. Maybe it's similar to when people report the contents of their dreams, or describe something like synaesthesia. I notice that many mature practitioners do not make any such claims at all.

> How does one verify that their sensations during meditation are real reflections of how the brain works and not just increasingly subtle hallucinations?

What's the difference between "real reflections of how the brain works" and hallucinations? I'm not sure that it's actually necessary to reflect upon one's experience during meditation.

Question: have you sat for a retreat? The reason I’m asking is I’m curious if it’s a “dosage” issue.

I sat for a 10 day goenka retreat and was shocked at how psychedelic the experience was for how little warning I was given.

Many schools, including Goenka downplay or ignore the risks from meditation.

Goenka is infamous in the serious meditation community, as they do not use qualified teachers in their retreats. The teaching is in the videos, the guides may not be able to help you if you start to freak out.

This was 100% my experience. The assistant teachers had no experience with anything beyond goenka vipassana courses. Was not helpful when I was encountering partial dissolution of the Self and high bliss states.

I’ve been for a 10 day Goenka retreat and did not experience anything psychedelic. However I did experience much calmness and continue to practice the techniques to this day. They have changed my life and made me a much more patient, kind, and reflective person.

I had a light psychedelic experience on my first retreat, with very noticeable visual object patterns and cartoons appearing in the heathered shirt of the yogi sitting in front of me, during a couple different periods of holding a stable meditation state. I've never had anything like that happen except on cannabis edibles or classic psychedelics.

I would recommend people sit their first retreat at a more supportive and forgiving retreat center. The 10-day Goenka retreats seem to vary in quality and sometimes unnecessarily harsh from what I've read, I've not sat one personally. I don't like the idea of getting all instructions from video also, instead of all the great living teachers out there today.

I'd recommend IMS on the East Coast, and Spirit Rock on the West Coast. They have really great teachers and very supportive schedule and environment for beginners. Downside is it's more costly than a free retreat, but I found it to be very much worth it.

Thank you for the recommendations! I've been looking at my next retreat and this is the second time Spirit Rock has come up. The goenka retreat was very harsh, very insightful, but ultimately lacking in teacher quality. From what I could gather the teachers available to me had only ever meditated in the vipassana style and were not particularly helpful.

Yep, same here. Definitely had some psychedelic moments. I think in part it's because all you can do is meditate. The sensory restrictions and the fact it's a silent retreat as well all help. Your brain goes in overdrive and comes up with stuff that you won't come up with when you have conversations or consume some content on tv or youtube.

> How does one verify that their sensations during meditation are real reflections of how the brain works and not just subtle hallucinations?

I guess the scientific method[0] should be the de-facto approach.

But one shouldn't necessarily expect to reach certainty: science is intrinsically humble, as it merely limits itself to the creation of models of reality, and to their refinement, by way of minimizing the error between theory & experimentation.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

I learned how to meditate at a Soto Zen monastery, so just facing the wall. And I experienced the typical sort of makyo (hallucinations) you might expect such as faces, a sort of tunnel effect, colours, etc.

I recently switched to a Chan method of facing outward and the hallucinations I experienced were extreme. At first, time felt as if it had completely stopped and what felt like days were going by as I sat there, the floor itself became liquid and water droplets were hitting it and I had a number of other pretty intense optical illusions. I was sitting perfectly still and my gaze was also almost still. I meditated for an hour and once it was over it suddenly felt like the entire experience didn't even happen and only a few minutes went by. But I felt amazing after I was finished.

Makyo is a common experience, but it was one monks had said to not be concerned with as it's just a hallucination. My experience going through that was ultimately unpleasant and not like the states you mentioned but it was immaterial to meditation itself.

I think that part of the purpose of meditation is to recognize a few things, such as your thoughts about the past and thoughts about the future are just like imagination (and a source of strife for people who are caught up in that imaginary world) and your thoughts are things you've consumed, much like your body was once food. So when one meditates you watch these thoughts arise and go by, you feel all sorts of sensations in the body come and go. I don't think the purpose, at least as I understand it, is to experience pleasure or find happiness. I guess if that happens it happens but it doesn't mean anything and is not something you should identify with.

I'm no monk so I'm not qualified to teach anything but I think ultimately part of the goal of meditation is to recognize some basic truths about who you are and about the nature of your existence through a careful and very simple method (just sitting), and that's all there is to it.

Holding one's gaze still leads very rapidly to intense visual hallucinations. Just as the mind hallucinates the details in our blind spot, when you gaze fixedly long enough, the entire visual field begins to go - and in the process, becomes a recursive game of visual hallucination telephone.

A clarifying question - are you saying the experience itself that you described was unpleasant, but that afterwards it felt amazing? Was it unpleasant due to the nature of the time dilation?

The jhanas were describes in the suttas. You can verify it yourself. Leigh Brasington has a lot of resources making them more accessible, https://www.lionsroar.com/entering-the-jhanas/.

I would agree that the jhanas are hallucinations and initially not subtle whatsoever. By repeated exploration of the jhanas you learn that the states are wholly dependent on many things not under your control. Application of these states in real life is a whole different animal compared to simply being able to access them as well.

* Edit: If you do decide to dive in, the first jhana can be very disorienting. It's definitely a good idea seek help in integrating the experience. Feel free to message me, and I can help or at least point you in the right direction!

I’m not enlightened and I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong :) But you’re asking questions I’ve spent years thinking on myself, and I’m interested to talk about it.

> If you convinced someone that the brain has a secret mechanism to feel perfect happiness, wouldn’t a lot of people hallucinate that they’ve experienced it even if it wasn’t real?

Your own experience is some proof against this — even after 10 years, you’re not claiming experiences you haven’t had, and aren’t hallucinating or imagining deeper states you’ve not reached. So even if some people are exaggerating, it’s not reasonable to think that everyone is.

And it would be _a lot_ of people. For thousands of years across many religious traditions humans have talked about reaching elevated states. Their experiences share common features. They teach others common techniques.

> From the outside, both of these people seem like normal humans, maybe calmer and wiser than usual, but who still seek material comfort and the validation of others just like anyone else does.

I think that’s an inevitable part of our condition — wanting to be warm and fed and in the company of those who love us. Even Buddha had disciples and friends. People like people. Sure, some folks live in a monastery or cave or ashram and use that social isolation as part of their practice and discipline. It doesn’t seem necessary for everyone.

> I haven’t experienced anything like the sometimes superhuman claims that come from people in this community.

Consider that meditation is only one part of the religious practice of (e.g.) Buddhism. There are millennia of teachings and traditions designed to prepare for meditation, to physically and mentally endure it, and to understand and process your experiences. Meditation without this set of traditions is a bit of an orphaned practice, a little like Catholics taking communion without going to church or praying or listening to sermons.

Meditation is a powerful practice and it can hurt. People with trauma, for instance, can have flashbacks or panic attacks brought on by it. Trauma is often deeply suppressed in the body, and meditation helps one connect better with the body, so of course it comes out unbidden.

Buddhist tradition distinguishes between the monk and the householder, between the person devoting their life to practice, and the person devoting their life to their family and job and community. It’s like living in the Shaolin temple and practicing kung fu 12 hours a day vs. going to the local dojo three hours a week. No harm in either one, and no judgement, but no surprise that people reach different places by being on different paths.

Jhanas are achieved a particular way and should be readily accessible once your concentration is strong enough (yours likely is). You may have not experienced them if you haven't accidentally pulled the right levers, so to speak. There are a few guides online of what to do, I suspect you'd succeed quickly

Links?

here's one, just google around for "how to access jhanas": https://www.lionsroar.com/entering-the-jhanas/#:~:text=If%20....

There are scientists who are weighing these questions. For example, see Thomas Metzinger's latest research on these kind of states presented here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f4ykI9har8 (and in the followup video)

Another good resource is the book "Zen and the Brain".

And this interview with Daniel Ingram mentions some fascinating research on his own capacities developed in meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APOKB59pVpE

It seems like you're heading down a rabbit hole. All you can do is have experiences (instead of just believing on faith). If you do, it's up to you to make sense of them. Trying to decide what is "real" sounds like an egoic distraction to divert you from continuing to make progress. The usual advice I hear is just to keep going.

Meditating for 30 years.

"Psychedelic experiences", superhuman, supernatural, crazy magic out-of-matrix stuff. Ya. It's real.

I'm gonna need some evidence that's not just "trust me bro"

What style of meditation do you do?

I used to do concentration meditation.

Then did concentration and vipassana.

These days just vipassana.

What's the difference between pleasure and hallucination o pleasure?

The thing with meditative pleasure is that it requires equanimity to appear, being content with almost nothing, which is perhaps why people do not become jhana junkies.

" I couldn’t sit still for a minute when I started "

This is me now. Do you have any advice on what meditation to do?

Some random resource recommendations:

I got started a few years ago when I saw the book "The Mind Illuminated" recommended here. There's a subreddit for it. (Fwiw, the author had a mini-scandal/non-scandal near the end of his life, which bothered a lot of people. You might look it up before getting too invested in the book.)

Many individuals that started out in "The Mind Illuminated" subreddit seem to have since shifted over to https://midlmeditation.com/ It also has a subreddit.

Both resources have step-by-step guides for absolute beginners. They both present Buddhist meditation practices, with varying degrees of Buddhist spirituality mixed in.

Here's a suggestion, plagiarized from a friend who is an experienced meditator! For one month, meditate for one minute. Set a timer on your smart phone, and do one minute. If you miss a day, restart the month. After a month of consistent practice, if you find yourself invited to do so, graduate to two minutes. Build from there. After quite a few years, I have found that a 20-minute sit at the beginning of the day and a 20-minute sit at the end of the day work for me.

> Given that wealthy countries like the US aren’t exactly riding trend lines toward new peaks of mental health (depression rates in American adults are at an all-time high, while young people appear in the grips of a mental health crisis), scalable ways of not just mindfully soothing, but completely re-creating psychological experiences for the better should set off sirens of general, scientific, and funding intrigue.

I was all ready to criticize this, but the article pretty much sums up my feelings:

> Critics call it “McMindfulness,” a capitalist perversion of meditation that deals with stress by focusing inward on the breath, rather than outward on the social structures that cause so much of that stress.

I'm all for finding ways for people to improve their mental health and become more resilient to their suffering. But I can't help but feel the recent societal interest in meditation and psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's treating a symptom rather than a cause.

There's also a part of me that resists the "capitalization" of these tools for mental introspection. It feels, in some way, to be missing the point. That said, I'm not sure that resistance is correctly targeted. Why shouldn't someone be able to make money by providing people with tools to improve their lives? Is that thought a silly purity spiral, leaving scraps of potential well-being on the table just because the packaging is too slick?

But still, there's something about it that feels off to me, as though there's something that's lost when we package all this ancient, hard-won wisdom into a smartphone app whose notifications to you will sit right next to the latest Elon Musk tweet.

> I can't help but feel the recent societal interest in meditation and psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's treating a symptom rather than a cause.

I agree, but the question emerges "what is treatable?" Many of the thousands of causes of stress in modern life can't be changed by an individual: I can't unelect politicians I disagree with, clean up the air where I live, or make the roads I travel significantly less clogged with traffic. But I can change my reactions to these. Thich Nhat Hanh taught people 'to consider every red traffic light a Bodhisattva, teaching us to "stop and be here now"'. An individual can treat SOME causes: Disconnect from Twitter and nightly TV news, and if that's what you mean, I agree with you even more strongly. But for larger realities, "the social structures that cause so much of the stress", no immediate solutions are available to the individual. Stress reduction is a good way to go.

> Many of the thousands of causes of stress in modern life can't be changed by an individual

The counterpoint is essentially that if people engaged in social outward-looking collective action, as opposed to solitary inward-looking meditation, then you can change the world -- as has been demonstrated countless times.

You certainly can unelect politicians in the next election. Environmental movements have made gigantic progress towards cleaning up the air. And congestion pricing is starting to spread as the solution for cities to reduce traffic, and it works.

As an individual you probably won't be the single tipping point. But collective action happens because lots of individuals work together, and it requires all of those individuals. But it requires more than changing your reactions, it requires collective action.

Interesting that this replies to a comment quoting Thich Nhat Hanh, who practiced "engaged Buddhism" and whose name means "one action" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Nh%E1%BA%A5t_H%E1%B...).

> The counterpoint is essentially that if people engaged in social outward-looking collective action, as opposed to solitary inward-looking meditation, then you can change the world -- as has been demonstrated countless times.

Yes, it has been demonstrated, and yes it requires collective action, but no that doesn't mean I (necessarily) have the time, energy or skill to act effectively to change any one, let alone dozens or thousands of these stressors, even if they're enormously stressful to me currently. The 'bang for the buck' in my world is to address the stressors at the personal level, and hope/intend to contribute to some worthy cause as well.

Why do these two actions contradict each other? People can do both. Gandhi was not only a community organizer who affected broad, collective action but also practiced meditation.

Where do people get the energy to take outward collective action if they are bogged down by stress and frivolous thoughts? I see meditation and/or psychedelics as the only way to get people to do pro-societal things, above individualistic things that are not thoughtful uses of time.

> You certainly can unelect politicians in the next election.

Unfortunately this is not literally true in that an election puts a different politician in the place of the former one. This is how most democracies are inconsistent and don’t allow people to choose anarchy.

> Stress reduction is a good way to go

I totally agree, I think the thing I find discomforting is the apparent conflict between the systems that exacerbate the "problem" and the fact that a meditation app, medicalized psychedelic trip, or scientific research into either seems somehow part of that system. It feels like instead of becoming tools for liberation from daily suffering or for deepening the understanding of one's consciousness, these tools are being subsumed and defanged by the same system that makes us need them.

It's some of the same feeling as seeing businesses embrace social justice culture - without even getting into the whole "woke" debate, I'll just say it often feels weird to see these big machines of capitalism embrace these causes. It feels cynical - rather than "this is a good cause, we will support it" it feels like "people are into social justice, this is good marketing".

But again, maybe that's OK. If Disney embraces LGBT causes for cynical reasons to sell movies, but instrumentally advances rights or attitudes in doing so - or if Headspace makes a ton of money, but genuinely improves someone's internal experience - or if Joe Rogan convinces someone to try psychedelic therapy, and that person is able to work through some issues and be better for their family - it's hard to find an argument that these are bad things.

But they still make me feel weird.

I agree. It makes me feel weird, too. Google famously says "Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." I can cynically add "So they can monetize it." However idealistically a company's mission might be framed, in the end survival via being profitable is a core unstated goal. A company dedicated to bringing stress relief to the world participates in the same dynamic. It's a bit like hearing how psychopaths can emulate empathy because they know it will get them what they want. Eek/shiver.

I agree.

I personally think it's about the world becoming more and more uncertain. Everybody is supposed to switch careers a bunch of times during lifetime, everybody is expected to push their limits, everybody is expected to stay on top ever changing social norms.

It's just too much pressure. There is very little average Joe can do to have a fairly sure good living. While the system has a lot of opportunities for talented people, just getting by on working hard, being punctual, trustworthy and such, is increasingly hard.

As lord Vetinari says, people mostly don't want tomorrow to be better - they want it to be the same. It's more and more unlikely nowadays.

Yup, I've pretty much become a hermit because I can't be bothered to keep up with the ever-changing social norms (which if you breach, you get the harshest consequences including social exclusion, public shaming and "consequences"), ever-changing popular culture and ever-changing everything.

> Critics call it “McMindfulness"

I am both amused and disgusted by this term. Why does everything nowadays have to generate profit or else it's worthless? I'd like to get off this capitalist roller coaster please.

As an adult with ADHD meditation is helping me greatly with some of my executive functions. That being said I don't use any apps as I despise my cell phone in general; It's just a constant stream of micro-aggressions and distractions.

The world isn't so bad. You might just need a perspective shift. A huge number of regular human activities and interactions don't generate profit, and yet aren't considered worthless. Go play an intramural sport, or take a walk with a friend, or read a book to a niece or nephew, or spark up a chat at a coffee shop, or hell, comment on Hacker News.

The vast number of capitalist activities and goings on aren't so bad either. I look out my window and walk through the world, and I see a society chock full of people working to provide useful things and services to others in society who find it valuable. Which is amazing. And it's profit that enables people to do this much of the time.

To elaborate further my comment also stems from articles referring to things like this being a $50 billion dollar industry. A lot of services or goods are described as such like we are all just dollar signs.

I also play airsoft, walk twice a week with a friend and spend time with my children. Those are all great things and I like your optimism...

However I disagree that our capitalist society is a good thing, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Nobody gets to be a billionaire without exploiting the working class.

The morbid, but critically true, reality is that there are different humans. There are Takers, Givers, Neutral.

We are ruled by Takers.

(service to self, as opposed to service of others)

Which is a core tenant of meditation (service to others)

We as a Humanity will not heal until we can kill the Takers Archetype in the psyche.

Thus why meditation helps.

But literally - the Takers who are the "they" or "TPTB" are so fn broken, that changing that psychological worm is extremely difficult - and its a self-defending psychosis that spans generations and is hard to qwell.

EDIT because of the 'posting too fast rule (lame)' ;;

Mayan word ;; "In Lak'ech"

'I am another Yourself'

> Which is a core tenant of meditation (service to others)

It always seemed the opposite to me. One meditates for ones self.

With the caveat that any discussion of meditation is fraught with "no true Scotsmans" and hypotheticals ...

Something that the American Theravadin Thanissaro Bhikkhu says is that meditation is "for my own benefit and the benefit of those around me."

E.g., during a disagreement with someone, you remain calm and avoid giving the other person a "piece of your mind".

The other person doesn't have to deal with the "piece of your mind", which is to their benefit.

>> Which is a core tenant of meditation (service to others)

> It always seemed the opposite to me. One meditates for ones self.

And in the process, like in Kant's practical reason, we recognize not only our selves, but see other selves like us in the world. There's no contradiction

We like takers. We hate givers.

> But I can't help but feel the recent societal interest in meditation and psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's treating a symptom rather than a cause.

Yet, if you cannot treat the illness treating the symptom is better than nothing.

The MAPS conference (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) was protested by indigenous people for colonizing their medicine practices. Their point was about what you're touching on here:

These tools were developed to address the problems of the world, not to play into the individualization of collective harm. They were for helping the world, not simply self.

A great test of whether or not these methods are colonized: does one come away with the ability to envision decolonial anticapitalist ways forward and then choose to enact them?

If not, probably colonized medicine.

Decontextualized wisdom is a form of ignorance and typically leads to harm.

> “My hope is that ultimately, this work will contribute to bringing advanced meditation out of the monastery,” Sacchet said, describing its “incredible promise for moving beyond addressing mental health issues, toward helping people thrive.”

What exactly is considered "advanced meditation"? I've been meditating for years, but don't do it for hours each day or go on extended silent retreats. I've read many practices too and I'm not aware of anything "advanced" outside of just spending more time and revolving more of your life around it. 10-15 minutes a day already does wonders for me.

There's a lot of different practices, though in a lot of schools that have practiced meditation for centuries, "Mindfulness" style meditation – what's largely practiced in the west – is just one aspect. The Dalai Lama, for instance, discuss at length in his books deeper phases of meditation that focus on things like "emptiness" [1] or compassion, loving-kindness, etc. Someone who's more knowledgable can correct me if I'm wrong, but the 'mindfulness' type meditation is almost like a warmup for these other forms of meditation.

1: Emptiness meditation, best I can describe it, is sort of like meditating on how something like a "Chair" falls apart under scrutiny. We perceive it as a solid object, yet when you analyze its parts, it tends to 'fall apart', and what makes it a "Chair" becomes hard to pin down. You start to see it more as a coming together of many things, each of which also tends to fall apart under scrutiny. Worth pointing out that this 'emptiness' is not the same as nihilism.

Ah I see. So the subject/practice of your meditation is what is considered advanced. i.e. metta, vipassana, samatha, etc. I read the entire article and it hardly spoke about what is considered "advanced" from the monasteries.

There are "attainments" or maps. A lot of teachers don't communicate them since it can be a bit of a trap, since striving to reach an attainments can prevent you from reaching it.

More contemporary dharma teachers have been willing to go into it. The jhanas is one such map.

As an intermediary step simply being able to stay with your breath for an hour while still being aware/not falling asleep is a good goal.

http://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-studies

It seems they're using the term to distinguish "meditation for emotional regulation" (v1 research) from "meditation for itself" (v2 research)

In Hinduism, meditation is not just a calming practice, but an actual movement toward God. And in the tradition I follow, it is also not for beginners. Basic discipline — the following of the Yamas (restraints of non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, etc.) — is recommended first.

I like to consider Meditation outside of any religion personally.

Meditation helps to calm the nervous system. Counting to 10 (1 count per inhale + exhale), or simply focusing on each inhale & exhale, or repeating a word or multi-word mantra, is what I do personally.

It's especially nice in a Sauna with some mystical atmospheric music (such as Anugama, one of my favorites for meditation).

I have found that it improves my ability to concentrate (especially useful when studying or working) and to calm myself in stressful situations.

You find all kinds of approaches in the Eastern traditions. Buddha rejected the eternalism and theism of the Hindus, but most of his teachings were really quite similar. The yoga sutras emphasized asana prior to the practice of dhyana. Go further east and some of the chan/zen schools rejected all formal teaching methods such as ethical precepts and sutra studies in favor of meditation alone. This latter is where the modern mindfulness movement found its primary inspiration.

Exactly. How many Westerners are trying to meditate without a conscious belief in a Higher Power, an Infinite Creator, God, or such? I wonder if there may be negative spiritual effects by employing meditation without seeking closeness with divinity.

Atheism isn't a solely Western thing.

Not all meditative traditions require belief in a God.

See Hindu atheism for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_atheism

Eh, my guess is it just isn't quite as effective. Belief in a higher power makes things a lot easier to accept and meditation in many aspects is the practice of accepting emotions and thoughts.

I would also say prayer like you see in Abrahamic religions is its own type of meditation. You also enter a sort of meditative state in sports where you kind of feel in the moment and "in the flow" where there's not God involved... at least not consciously.

>Eh, my guess is it just isn't quite as effective.

I suppose that would be less guess and more...belief. :)

Meditation is not just about accepting emotions and thoughts; you can get such by talking with a close friend or visiting a mental health counselor. Many people claim to receive new insight or guidance amidst the mental stillness. Two common explanations is that it's either God or your Higher Self sending a message.

Prayer is absolutely a form of meditation, arguably a more advanced form. If meditation fosters observation of self and others, prayer takes that observation and combines it with will to cause action.

What you're ultimately getting at is the difference between "going through the motions" and proper meditation and prayer. Most spiritual systems discuss a "right" way to meditate or pray which focuses less on the external actions and more on your internal desire.

We've stripped off the religious part and rebranded it as mindfulness. There have been reports of having positive impact on mental health.

Interesting point. There are obvious connections from the Yamas to the eight-fold path of Buddhism: Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

I’m not aware of an explicit ordering. But the other seven steps complement and deepen the meditation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path

Relevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C4%81ja_yoga#Comparison_with...

Huairang asked [Mazu], "Why are you sitting in meditation?" [Mazu] replied, "Because I want to become a Buddha." Thereupon Hauirang took a brick and started to polish it in front of [Mazu]'s hermitage. [Mazu] asked him, "Why are you polishing that brick?" Huairang replied, "Because I want to make a mirror." [Mazu] asked, "How can you make a mirror by polishing a brick?" Huairang said, "If I cannot make a mirror by polishing a brick, how can you become a Buddha by sitting in meditation?" [Mazu] asked, "Then what shall I do?" Huairang asked, "When an ox-carriage stops moving, do you hit the carriage or the ox?" [Mazu] had no reply. Huairang continued, "Are you practicing to sit in meditation, or practicing to sit like a Buddha? As to sitting in meditation, meditation is neither sitting nor lying. As to sitting like a Buddha, the Buddha has no fixed form. In the non-abiding Dharma, one should neither grasp nor reject. If you try to sit like a Buddha, you are just killing the Buddha. If you attach to the form of sitting, you will never realize the principle." Upon hearing this [Mazu] felt as if he had tasted ghee.

Keep whipping that cart!

On a light note: There is a difference between micro-wave meditation and slow-cook meditation! Personally, I'm a slow-cook kind of guy. This article seems to be describing various ways to short-cut or accelerate the process, and I'm not sure of the wisdom of that game plan.

One important aspect of meditation practice for me has been the gentle unpacking of suppressed trauma. Thomas Keating refers to this as the evacuation of the unconscious. In my experience this is an evaporative process. With gentleness and patience, this process happens naturally and organically over time.

Inner psychological defenses and coping mechanisms tend to fade away as they become less needed, because the inner demons they were containing have evaporated and are no longer lurking in one's subconscious. But trying to accelerate the process and crash the door down before one is ready via some artificial short-cut may not be advisable for some people.

Yes, and crashing the door down may be the only option for others who think the door is a brick wall.

A few years ago I tried the very first Headspace meditation courses, back when Headspace was pretty new.

It was great! I loved it. I really felt like the narrator was knowledgeable and had something to teach me. His explanations for the process actually made sense, and weren't woo-woo mumbo jumbo. Perhaps it is all placebo effect, but even if so, the effect worked for me perfectly.

The problem is, as the industry exploded, it became harder and harder to find meditation guides that have that quality.

Even on Headspace, which I used to love, there's only so much they could provide, before the demand necessitated putting out meditation guides that are more and more ridiculous ("meditation for doing the dishes", "meditation for walking the dog", etc).

And I haven't found any guides that help me to the degree that the original Headspace ones did. Would love it if anyone has any recommendations.

(of course, you might say "you don't need a guide once you know how to do it", but personally I find it really hard without some recorded guide helping me along)

If you find it hard without some recorded guide helping you along, that’s exactly why you should consider meditating without a guide. Guided meditation is like riding a bike with training wheels. You don’t fall, but you’re not really riding a bike.

You learn to meditate by trying and failing over and over, and in the process you learn your own mind. You learn all its tricks. And that’s the point. It can suck for a long time. It can be a grind. But eventually, you stabilize.

I use the Headspace guided meditation (30 mins) 2-3 times every day. Did that not work for you? It's amazing how hard they make it just to find the basic guided meditation. Not pushing anything spiritual or ways of thinking the guide prefers. Just experiencing the present.

Waking Up by Sam Harris.

It's more insight than mindfulness, but remains secular. Loads of content from big names.

Highly recommended.

Seconded. I'm working through the month-long Introductory Course currently. Waking Up strikes me as much more technical than apps like Headspace, which really resonates with me.

The Brightmind app is excellent, and you can adjust the duration of the guided meditations.

Think of cessation, also scripturally described as the “non-occurrence of consciousness,” like voluntarily inducing the effects of general anesthesia. Consciousness switches off without a trace, while the basic homeostatic operations of the body — temperature, heartbeat, breathing — remain online.

- Isn't this like the nirvana of nirvanas ? I had heard about some of the monks in the Himalayas able to attain these states but had brushed it off as utter nonsense.

Since now we know this is feasible, can we surmise that there is no need for an external chemical to shut off the mind or to even alter the mental state of a person ? Could you for instance get into an alcohol or a drug induced state without drinking or doing drugs - What a world would that be ..

I mean as I understand it one way of approaching meditation looks like this: at first you just concentrate on your breathing, avoiding extraneous thoughts, then once you can do that without distraction, you move on and try to step back from your thoughts, watching them arrive and letting them go.

once you can do that—something I could do after a few days of practice—how far are you realistically from being able to not have those thoughts at all? perhaps that's a huge leap, but I would be surprised

> can we surmise that there is no need for an external chemical to shut off the mind or to even alter the mental state of a person?

That is exactly what the Gateway Hemisync process claims to accomplish. See my post below for more information on it.

At least in Theravada Buddhism this isn’t the right way to conceive of enlightenment with respect to samati, or meditative states.

The mind is composed of several faculties, that spring from themselves, and lead to certain states of being that ultimately lead to suffering. The key ones for this discussion are the thinking mind (or in Thailand the monkey mind), which is what we typically dwell in. It’s the mind that tells stories about the past and the future, where we talk with people in conversations we won’t have or wish we had had, where we identify ourselves as being something specific. We also have a feeling mind, or emotive mind. It doesn’t form structured thoughts like the thinking mind, but it creates impetus and acts in a feedback loop with the thinking mind. A lot of our misery comes from this feedback loop. We also have a sensate mind, which is where we feel our body, all sensations but we tend to focus our thinking and emotive mind on pleasurable and unpleasant sensations.

In Theravada Buddhism these faculties are emergent but are not true experience of our true selves. They are tools of our true mind, but have become dominant and exclusionary, hiding our true self. Our true self is our awareness, which exists without thought or feelings, but is the source of all thoughts and feelings. It constantly changes, it has no identity per se, but it is not unconscious. It is where we actually are, all thoughts exist in context of it, but it’s thinking isn’t visible or directly experienced in the way thoughts or feelings are.

People often find this confusing and find the admonition to not think in vipassana meditation to mean erase all mental existence and be a body without any being. That’s actually not at all the goal. The goal is to silence the mind that chatters for a bit, the emotions that pull us and manipulate our thoughts to sooth, so we can be aware of our awareness. You are still fully awake - intensely so in fact. You still “feel,” but the feelings are compassion and loving kindness, and they’re not feelings that control you or make your sensate body feel some experience (such as a tight chest or thrill) or capture your chattering thoughts.

Eventually thoughts and feelings will intrude and the goal then is to see them for what they are, facilities of your mind, and to let them be there but don’t let them capture your awareness

By practicing this in meditation you can bridge this state into daily life. As you spend more time aware but not chattering away, you are more in the present and in the immediate now. You find you only feel compassion and loving kindness for all like, and anger, hate, and fear are artifacts of those faculties. They can be helpful in some situations, but they are fairly rare situations. It feels strange at first to not be totally enmeshed in your thoughts. At first I was afraid I would disappear if I did this, sort of like the quote you have. But I didn’t. Who I wasn’t disappeared, and I became myself for the first time since I was a little child.

The best teachings on meditation are found in the Pali texts, imo. They purport to be a reasonable recording of the Buddha's teachings. In this text, one of the repeated internal exercises is "subduing greed & distress" while practicing meditation.

“Mindfulness of in-&-out breathing, when developed & pursued, is of great fruit, of great benefit. Mindfulness of in-&-out breathing, when developed & pursued, brings the four establishings of mindfulness to their culmination. The four establishings of mindfulness, when developed & pursued, bring the seven factors for awakening to their culmination. The seven factors for awakening, when developed & pursued, bring clear knowing & release to their culmination." -Ānāpānasati Sutta [0]

[0] https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN118.html

I was skeptical, but this article does a decent job reiterating the reasons that researching meditative altered states reproduces the same inappropriate KPIs as earlier generations of mindfulness research.

Nirodha samipatti may be a fancy attainment, but Im skeptical sticking electrodes on Daniel Ingram's head is going to advance the secular understanding of dharma wisdom.

Learning about neural networks has helped me understand meditation better.

The ‘bias’ number fed into a neural network neuron is determined by the external training data (or for humans by our experiences)

Meditation allows the neural network itself to reprogram its bias itself internally rather than rely on new external data.

I think a key point that a lot of people miss is that meditation is just a single practice. The goal is mindfulness.

This is to say that you can meditate mindlessly, as you can meditate mindfully. You can also be mindful without meditation, although it's a lot more difficult to do so.

> The goal is mindfulness.

That's just, like, your opinion?

At least explain your perspective. How do you view meditation?

What is your recommendation gateway to meditation?

The Sam Harris Waking Up meditation course is pretty good from a doing it point of view.

But in terms of helping you understand why meditation is actually something you should do, there's a book called The Happiness Trap which outlines Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which is basically western mindfulness.

Just be aware of everything, without resistance.

I like how you qualified that with "Just" :)

the trend laid out in this article seems like a good thing.

Zen people talk about meditation being "useless" which is kind of true I think. It's not literally a complete waste of time. But if you have any specific problem (in your life, mental health, or otherwise), you have to take specific actions well-suited to solve that problem, meditation actually just cannot accomplish specific goals like that.

At most depending on the tradition, you can reliably put yourself into specific altered mental states. But these don't have much practical use either.

So I think selling people meditation as a practical, reliable mental health treatment was just never a very good idea and I am glad consensus seems to be moving away from it.

Highly recommend reading Mastering the core teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram, available online for free at https://www.mctb.org/

Anyone have any recommendations for those of us without attention spans?

I've always wanted to mediate, but after a few attempts, I have started to question if it's more possible for some to partake in than others.

I have done zazen over 20 years and know many people who have ADHD and do it a lot. You need less than a second attention span. What you need is the ability to bring mind back endlessly. It's like learning to juggle, picking up juggling pins from the ground again and again.

"The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character and will." – William James

How long am I supposed to bring my mind back for?

Based on my past experiences:

Every time I try, it's gone again so fast that that it's like an endless loop. And that's if I am conscious enough to catch it. Hell, my mind can wander for minutes at a time without me even realizing that I was supposed to be focusing on something else.

Not trying to argue against your recommendations, but I am really trying to dig deeper into the topic to figure out where the disconnect I am facing is.

> Every time I try, it's gone again so fast that that it's like an endless loop.

Only advice I have to you is:

1. Do no take meditation advice from the internet. Or try to battle with your difficulties endlessly alone, with books, or the internet. Internet is full of fools. Deeply into the mediation who just try to be helpful, but have no experience (even if they claims so).

2. Start training in a group where teacher has trained for decades and taught others for a very long time to give you instructions (Happens often in religious Buddhist setting, but if they know what they are doing it does not matter, mindfulness teachers for profit generally don't know shit, they just repeat what they learned in the course).

> How long am I supposed to bring my mind back for?

One point of view is that once your mind no longer wanders, you no longer need concentration meditation. The whole purpose of the exercise is for you to learn to bring your mind back.

Don't worry about your mind wandering, it's normal. When you notice, bring it back. There is no disconnect, you're doing fine.

You're going to be battling with your attention a lot in the beginning. I think just making a habit of it regardless and putting in the time is necessary.

You could always go on a retreat — you'll have very limited options for distractions. It might sound like an extreme thing to do, and maybe it is, but I did it without much prior practice and got a lot out of it.

> You could always go on a retreat — you'll have very limited options for distractions.

They would probably kick me out within 5 minutes of being there. That's what they used to do to me in classrooms when I was in my youth lol.

I'll be honest though, even if a retreat would work, that is honestly far more effort than I would be willing to spend for something that I have no idea if it's even worth the time, effort, and money.

I do appreciate the recommendation though, and since you went through the effort of replying to my request, I will at least look into as to not waste your time.

"A newbie once met a dzogchen master: - Do you meditate? - Why meditate? - So you aren't distracted. - Am I distracted?"

It's from one book about dzogchen. Rephrasing it: "- Do you practice balancing? - Why would I do that? - So you can stand upright. - Am I not standing upright?" (while the newbie is still crawling)

I do not think I understand what this means.

Is the point that the newbie does not understand what they are failing to achieve? Is the newbie just supposed to know it when they finally achieve whatever the goal is?

Speaking of, what even is the goal? I understand mediation has benefits, and people that can succeed at it are usually never shy to sing its praises. However, I still do not understand what benefits one actually gets from it.

If you want the honest truth, I have only wanted to mediate to fix various aliments in my life -- anxiety, stress, negative emotions, etc. in a healthy manner (assuming it even works for that).

Perhaps it's my impulsive tendencies coming to light again, but I do not actually care about mediation, spiritual journeys, enlightenment, etc.. I just want to find some god damn relief that isn't just another form of copium.

Books teaching meditation, such as lamrim, usually begin with a list of preliminary work to neutralise the typical negative conditions: lust is neutered by imagining disgusting things, pride is neutered by thinking about the dissolution of elements and so on. Most people will spend their lifetime combating these flaws.

Once they are kept under control, meditation begins. The spiritual part is about the purpose of such interest in meditation.

I’m in the same boat. I can’t do the sitting still type of meditation. I’ve found that strenuous exercise works best for me. Jogging for an hour and a half for example - long enough and at slow enough pace (so I’m not huffing and puffing) that the only thought in my mind is how sore my legs are.

This might not help and might sound new age / abstract: meditation is not continuous focus, but is about choosing to focus, letting thoughts pass, and when you recognize you are distracted to consciously let the distracting thought go, and return to focusing on what you intended to.

I mean, isn't that what I have always done to begin with? For example, when reading a book, I can sometimes read a whole page without actually internalizing anything my eyes pretended to skim across. (My body can mimic the actions of reading, but my mind is somewhere else, if that makes things more clear).

I have always done this with things like reading, conversations, work, etc.. When distracted I have to refocus myself on whatever I was supposed to be focusing on. Is that some kind of quasi-mediation still or something else?

It's like with exercise, regular life maintains muscles at some low level, but specific techniques (lifting) make it possible to get much stronger.

Same goes with brain, you can train your imagination, focus, mental resilience, happiness via consistent practice.

I have ADHD, and meditation is one of the tools I use to help control my mind. It's the practice of acknowledging a passing thought without letting it consume my focus that has been most useful, not paying attention to a particular mind state itself, if that makes sense.

I thought this was the most significant excerpt in the article.

> Now, as the research matures into controlled studies and meta-analyses, meditation is losing a bit of its luster. It’s beginning to look more like just another decently effective medical intervention. A 2021 systematic review of 44 meta-analyses found that mindfulness was mostly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants in terms of treatment effects (mindfulness was superior in a few categories, however, including treating depression and substance abuse).

"A 2021 systematic review of 44 meta-analyses found that mindfulness was mostly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants in terms of treatment effects"

That's not bad company. Compared to the cost and time required for CBT, and the frequent side effects of anti-depressants, teaching folks "mindfulness" to get the same benefit sounds wonderful!

Yes, I was also surprised at how the article underplayed this. "Tons of evidence that it's ONLY as good as the best therapy and drugs"

> We have ideas like biological taxonomies and genetics that provide a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding and exploration of universally relevant fields. “We need that for the deep end of spiritual experience,” he said. “What works as well in Riyadh, as Rome, as Rio, as rural Alabama? What’s the functional, scalable essence?”

That was the purpose comparative tools like correspondence charts[1] were intended for; Aleister Crowley and Allan Bennett put a bunch of effort of surveying all spiritual experience they could learn about, followed by tabulating it all and trying to pattern match. The result was a shared basis for cross-cultural understanding, though the actual form of it could be heavily criticised.

> Advanced meditation for everyone?

That was also Crowley's primary goal: to show that anyone at all could attain, and easily, while living a normal life, and thought that it would help them thrive. He stated this over and over again.

I love that we're finally making effort towards the thought he had, that

> Diverse as these statements [on mystical experiences] are at first sight, all agree in announcing an experience of the class which fifty years ago would have been called supernatural, to-day may be called spiritual, and fifty years hence will have a proper name based on an understanding of the phenomenon which occurred. (Book 4, Part 1; 1911[2])

though it's 70 years later than he thought. I'd love to be involved in work like this, both as an occultist/experienced meditator, and as a computer scientist / software developer, though I don't know how to get involved. Maybe by contacting the EPRC listed? :)

May all attain!

[1] http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Tree_of_Life:777

[2] https://sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/aba1.htm

I find the use of the term "mindfulness" so frustrating. Meditation, or jnana yog is simply one of the types of yoga described in the Gita and Vedas, which was adopted by BUddhism, then by the West to manage their hectic lifestyles.

Its purpose is completely different, its purpose is to condition the body to help understand THAT YOU ARE NOT THE BODY and connect yourself with that higher purpose. Thats the whole purpose.

Reminds me of a blogpost by Scott Alexander that I can't find right now about the last unenlightened person, as far as he can see, in the world.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/04/samsara/

That's the one. Thank you very much.

Meh. We don't need a science. The last thing we need is a bunch of fine models and discussion.

What we need is some basic, dead-simple experiments that anybody can do. Experiments that show you that there's something there.

And then, after you see a bit, you are inspired to take another step.

The revolution is coming.. I hope we don't melt to death before

I would recommend taking up studying the teachings of the Buddha. There is a lot of valuable material and the hidden priceless gem of awakening

As a meditator, personally I'm a little sickened by the 'science of meditation.' From my view, meditation is ultimately (or at least often) about doing nothing. Limiting, reducing our judgments and reasoning mind. So applying logic and benefits and sticks and carrots to me is actually antithetical to the practice.

E.g.: you're anxious and want to get better, so you obsess about self-help and ways to get better. Some pop-sci author describes meditation as one such path. You make it your new obsession and think about how much you ought to be meditating but aren't. When you're meditating, you worry that you aren't doing it right such that you'll get the benefits.

There is of course an argument that this popsci helps bring people to something that's good for them, and for this I guess I'm ok with it. But it's annoying to me that meditation has become part of the corporate capitalist moneymaking, anxiety-provoking system that ultimately, it's actually completely unrelated to.

Meditation became popular when neoliberals figured out that it was something they could make the lower classes spend time on, and pay for, in order to optimize their utility as economic cogs.

Nothing money touches is left uncorrupted.

Whenever someone talks enthusiastically about meditation, I remind myself that all the popular meditation gurus I see on Youtube talk nonsense, pseudoscience, lack common sense and use manipulative psychological tricks. None of them admit any errors and ironically are quite conceited for those who claim to have conquered ego.

I am sure meditative states must feel nice. But all I see beyond that are cults and none of the meditators seem that much at detached peace. They get incensed at criticism.

What's popular on YouTube and what's good are very often not the same. You're seeing what YouTube is trying to optimize for... it's not surprising that it's manipulative, exaggerating, populist nonsense. YouTube could do this for literally any topic. The YT algorithm's take on the best meditation advice doesn't need to define what meditation is to you. Topics which should be "boring" get this treatment on social media. Find your information elsewhere or figure out how to filter and ignore the nonsense.

I don't disagree. This is hacker news. We all know how skewed social media is. We all understand the biases of recommendation algorithms.

However, my point is not one of presenting a representative sample, but rather easily accessible and video instances of highly visible subjects to illustrate.

There is plenty of scientific literature on meditation induced mental disorders for what you prefer. I have looked at that too.

There are multiple scientific studies show the positive affects of meditation and a myriad of health benefits....

I'm not sure what "gurus" you're seeing but it's not really relevant to objective studies that show it works and makes changes in the brain. I'm sure they are making some claims that are pseudoscience, but that doesn't mean meditation in its entirety is just a "feel nice" routine.

Here's just one of several I found in a quick search-

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4895748/

I think of meditation as exercise for your brain. Just like you need to physically exercise to "prepare" your body you need to be doing stuff to keep your brain from going haywire and jumping from though to though like its hopped up on caffeine all the time. There are various ways to do "train your brain" but meditation/mindfulness is one very good way to do it.

PMC has a lot of junk journals. Don't fall for them, especially if you want to use "Dr" in your nick. Most meditation research is rather low quality. Don't go around just googling your confirmation bias. One would not regard any journal on Ayurveda to have much scientific merit. It's essentially quackery. Their standards for peer review are low. This "paper" uses oxymorons such as "Vedic science".

Take this text for instance: "A feedback loop to the DNA starts a new cycle to provide whatever is needed for the activities of the cell. In meditation, the feedback loop to the deep inner Self (the seat of knowledge, like DNA) provides inner peace and bliss, which removes the accumulated stresses of life and improves overall health."

That gibberish would be an instant reject from any serious reviewer. This is not how science papers are written. This is the snake oil of the meditation world I was talking about. Minus the citations, this qualifies at best as a Facebook post. This might be an example of how meditation makes an educated man talk silly.

I also know several meditators. Anecdotally, not one improved his powers of concentration with meditation. They procrastinate and get distracted like everyone else, all while claiming they feel so much focused after meditation. Maybe, meditation makes them feel focused, while not actually being so.

There's also a lot of studies showing that meditation can cause harm.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01503-2

True... but this lends credence to the fact that it's not just a cult pseudoscience. It's actually having an effect positive or negative on people.

Ya, the meditation scene is 99.99% pure bullshit. And that's a crime.

First job for anybody trying to figure out this stuff is to scrape away the gunk and find a pearl of truth.

You have to do your own research. There is no substitute.

> You have to do your own research.

Generally a bad idea. Usually leads to quackery, pseudoscience beliefs etc. Individuals are much worse than institutions on matters of research.

Maybe if you have a dozen peers around to compare notes.

But the subject is esoteric. Peers are in short supply.

I've been meditating since the 70's. Nothing I see today exists in the meditation world without a taint of snake oil and predatory capitalism. We live in a conman's paradise.

Little google search I found this guy.

https://www.exploringtheproblemspace.com/new-blog/2018/2/18/...

To conclude that, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the "scientist" quoted in the article is just pure pseudoscience.

He's got a PhD from MIT in molecular biology. So nothing to do with meditation or neuroscience. But he was a scientist for a while. Now he's emeritus.

Brian Josephson won his Nobel and then got into transcendental meditation. He was talking pseudoscience since. It does not take away from him that he is a smart man, but it seems to have effected his rationality quite a bit.

I know some meditating academics. They all have this tendency to irrationality.

I think you can compare meditation to the field of "medicine" or "diet." There are cranks and pseudoscience in there too, but I wouldn't write off the whole field as irrational. It's got a semantic problem too. If more people called it "mindfulness" or "focus practice" that would be more accurate for how most normal, secular people meditate. Maybe even calling it meditation vs. alternative meditation (like alternative medicine). LOTS of different forms of meditation, and not all I think are worthwhile. Some are better than others.

TM seems like a total scam/fake though, just like chiropractic, astrology, juice cleanses etc.

What? A random blog post that is nothing more than a word salad of the blogger's filenames for their notes on Kabat-Zinn's book was enough to make you conclude that he's not a real scientist and just peddling pseudoscience?

Sounds like your own standard of evidence isn't much higher than pseudoscience.

You should click into the category and see there is literally ~100 blog posts about the issue.

Oh, I did, because I assumed there surely had to be more to your critique than just this list of filenames.

I only scanned a few posts, but it appears to be an old anonymous blog with disjointed musings about why the author finds mindfulness "annoying". I didn't see anything to convince me that this is worth digging into further, like for example: a really cogent argument, or some research, or any kind of background in anything remotely related, etc. So I'm still unclear on what made you conclude from this random blog that Kabat-Zinn is just peddling pseudoscience.

It honestly sounds like you're just anti-mindfulness, which isn't inherently a bad thing. I don't think we should have sacred cows, and there may be valid anti-mindfulness arguments from serious people out there. But drawing conclusions based on this particular blog makes it seem like you're not interested in figuring out what's true (ie, science) as much as finding justification to support your pre-existing position, regardless of the evidence (ie, pseudoscience).

Thank you. Jon Kabat-Zinn is a con artist and wanna be guru. It is easy to be calm when you are not homeless and disabled living with a chronic illness.

The science giveth and the science taketh away then I guess. Is it scientific to see if he has helped anyone with chronic pain?

Edit: wow, apparently some people here really don't like Gateway Hemisync. All I've tried to share source material on its claims and make a plea for keeping an open mind. Perhaps those so virulently opposed can find that open mind with meditation.

Recommend checking out the Koru system. It's an evidence-based mindfulness system out of the Research Triangle.

Regardless, the Monroe Institute already performed groundbreaking research in this area 50 years ago. I don't have a source at the moment, but I remember reading that the Monroe Institute's binaural beat audio programs creates brainwave patterns similar to that of an advanced Buddhist monk in meditation.

Apparently, the Monroe Institute discovered that the elevated mental states achieved by these monks is achieved with brain hemisphere synchronization, which they call "Gateway Hemisync." According to the Monroe Institute, "this process uses pulses of sound to create in both brain hemispheres electrical wave forms simultaneously equal in frequency and amplitude. The Institute was granted a patent in 1975 based upon the use of such sound pulses to induce a frequency following response (FFR) in the human brain. The FFR demonstrates that when you hear a certain type of sound, your brain tends to respond to, or resonate with, that sound...Each ear sends its dominant nerve signal to the opposite brain hemisphere...By sending separate sound pulses to each ear (using stereo headphones to isolate one ear from the other), the halves of the brain act in unison to “hear” a third signal, which is the difference in frequencies between the two signals in each ear" [1].

A group in the US Army performed a serious analysis of the Gateway Hemisync process, concluding that "there is a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives", which include "out-of-body movement", "terrestrial information gathering trips", and "possible encounters with intelligent, non-corporal energy forms when time-space boundaries are exceeded" [2].

The article is talking about scientific validation of meditation and its outcomes. That's not to say we should blindly accept the claims of those scientists, the Monroe Institute, or the US Army. The key is to follow the evidence while remembering that greed and prestige is what's causing the "McMindfulness" effect.

Smartphone apps will be most useful for personal guided meditations, but they should be freely available.

[1] https://vdocuments.net/the-gateway-experience-guidance-manua...

[2] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R0017002...

> A group in the US Army performed a serious analysis of the Gateway Hemisync process, concluding that "there is a sound, rational basis in terms of physical science parameters for considering Gateway to be plausible in terms of its essential objectives", which include "out-of-body movement", "terrestrial information gathering trips", and "possible encounters with intelligent, non-corporal energy forms when time-space boundaries are exceeded"

They concluded a lot of woo around when they were looking into silly things such as Targ's Remote Viewing. All of that later was revealed to be nonsense. Army and CIA, while are generally rational, are not necessarily great at critical thinking or science.

Ah, you are referring to the SRI experiments, though I'm not sure who "they" are. You should, however, be aware that the Proceedings of the IEEE (Volume: 64, Issue: 10, October 1976) contain a paper presenting the results of a remote-viewing experiment with n=36 and p=0.0000006 [1].

Many people who purport to "love science" set aside how much of one's understanding of the universe is axiomatic. Now, I've never directly experienced time dilation, and I have heard that GPS satellites have been created to take time dilation effects into account. I have, however, experienced and validated Newtonian dynamics (physics classes). In either case, both Newtonian dynamics and time dilation were presented to me as axiomatic; that is to say, I haven't performed a full, independent derivation of these two ideas of physics. However, I still accept that the general ideas are sound. If a model of physics supports the idea of remote viewing, so be it.

>Army and CIA, while are generally rational, are not necessarily great at critical thinking or science.

That's funny to say, seeing as it's well-established that military technology across all domains is significantly more advanced than the average person's technology. As a small example, neither one of us could make a stealth bomber capable of dropping nuclear ordinance anywhere in the world nor perform the required R&D to properly design one.

[1]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1454638

> n=36 and p=0.0000006

That is how pseudoscientific studies often look like. Low n, fantastic p, yet no replicability when you should expect 100% replicability. Why? They always turn out to be badly conducted experiments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvoyance#Scientific_recept...

The psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Targ and Puthoff's remote viewing experiments that were carried out in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute. In a series of 35 studies, they were unable to replicate the results so investigated the procedure of the original experiments. Marks and Kammann discovered that the notes given to the judges in Targ and Puthoff's experiments contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. They concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates. Marks was able to achieve 100 per cent accuracy without visiting any of the sites himself but by using cues. James Randi has written controlled tests by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests, produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the clues that had inadvertently been included in the transcripts.

A paper from 1976 claims to have detected ESP in its participants. The paper appears to have only been cited twice since, both in 1979, one to explain the 1976 results as experimental bias, and the other to report failure to reproduce. I wouldn't throw out my walkie-talkie just yet.

>If a model of physics supports the idea of remote viewing, so be it.

Okay. What's that model? Are brains RF transceivers?

> As a small example, neither one of us could make a stealth bomber capable of dropping nuclear ordinance anywhere in the world nor perform the required R&D to properly design one.

I never said they weren't good at tech and engineering. Anyway, the army and CIA make none of those. They just contract it out to Northrop or such, no? I haven't accused defense contractors of paranormal pseudoscience.

They want you to mediate so you can forget about the climate emergency and the fact that capitalism is failing 99% of us in the United States.

Mediation is opium, pure opium.

And I am saying this as a Doaist. Probably an ex-Daoist. Might have to get a new handle soon.

Ppl with mental disorders shouldn't meditate more than 20 min/day

How come?

I had the impression, people with mental disorders would profit the most from it.

Mostly because longer meditation practice is more frequently associated with something called the dark night of the soul https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-...

"Mental disorders" is overly broad. It sounds like we're talking schizophrenia here.

To maybe add a helpful analogy. Some meditative states aren't very different that an intense dose of psychedelics. Not to mention the person is "dosed" without expecting it.

If it's done unsupervised or without a support system such as a guide or teacher, the experience can be traumatic.

Why? How would you know?

Citation please!

Not OP, but it happened to me. Started meditation to deal with anxiety and the introspection that came with it, ended up with me on the verge of a complete breakdown. I started off doing Sam Harris and then progressed to doing an hour or more each day. I had some moments of insight and then hit some dark night of the soul which wrecked me, I was close to admitting myself to hospital for psychological help.

What fixed me was finally reading Breath by James Nestor and how you breath has a direct impact on the parasympathetic / sympathetic nervous system. I learned to take long slow breaths into the diaphragm and too nose breath all of the time. Basically my vagus nerve was fried from burn out and being in the fight flight mode of the parasympathetic system, as opposed to the 'rest and digest' chilled nature of sympathetic nervous system.

My own view now, is that mediation should not be attempted (at least by anyone with mental issues) until the parasympathetic / sympathetic system is balanced and stress is significantly reduced. This should start with the breath.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbaedd/meditation-is-a-power...

I feel like you did the wrong sort of meditation for anxiety. Mindfulness and breathing where you see the thought come and let it go is preferred for anxiety sufferers. You should not be following your anxious thoughts.

I could see how it would affect you negatively if you tried to follow all your anxious thoughts and delve into their "meaning". The goal for some with high anxiety ought to be lessening its meaning. You should just see it as another emotion with a neutral (or even helpful at times) stance. You don't lessen anxiety by giving it MORE attention. That seems like it would train your brain to think it's way too important and you'd get stuck in an anxiety loop.

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