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Comment by wubrr | Hacker News Reader

Many things have been practiced/studied for thousands of years - that alone isn't interesting or valuable imo.

What are the objective benefits of meditation - what is the exact/specific process and what specifically does it accomplish?

I can see how being in a silent reflective state and similar practices could have various effects and benefits (not that I know specifically what those are) - but what separates me zoning out in the shower/on the bus from actual meditation? How is 'guided' meditation when you're actively listening to someone else even the same thing?

Whenever I ask my meditating/'spiritual' friends about these things the response is basically vague undecipherable gibberish and allusions that it is unexplainable to someone like me who is not ready to accept the truths lol.

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What does reading a great novel or starting a garden specifically accomplish? People do some things for reasons that aren't easily quantifiable. It seems to me that you are starting from the viewpoint that everything has to prove its worth before you accept it, even if millions of people before you have found it fulfilling and worthwhile, which does not seem productive.

If you had never read a book before, and someone was trying to convince you to try it, what could they point to that would fulfill all your criteria? Would it be enough to say it makes you smarter? That's not very specific. It sharpens your thinking? Makes you more empathetic? That would all seem like 'vague undecipherable gibberish' if you had no experience with it. They might resort to saying that it can connect you with a great dialogue that has been occurring for over two thousand years, but as you say, the fact that people have been doing it for thousands of years doesn't make it interesting or valuable.

Seeing a study that some part of the brain responds more quickly for up to 90 minutes after reading or that people with gardens live 0.28 years longer on average would not make me want to do those things more, because those are NOT the benefits of doing those things. You have to figure out what you're supposed to do with your one human life. Science is one tool, culture is another. Neither of them makes the other superfluous.

> What does reading a great novel or starting a garden specifically accomplish?

It accomplishes many things - specifically granting entertainment, pleasure, etc that practitioners like.

> It seems to me that you are starting from the viewpoint that everything has to prove its worth before you accept it

I'm starting with the viewpoint that there are literally thousands of various different practices out there have have existed for a long time and have been practiced by many people. Many of these are complete bullshit. How do you filter out the good from the bad/useless?

> even if millions of people before you have found it fulfilling and worthwhile

Millions of people have found many many different things fulfilling and worthwhile over the ages, some of these things we've since realized are bullshit/bad. Do you accept every single belief/practice based on how popular it has been?

> If you had never read a book before, and someone was trying to convince you to try it, what could they point to that would fulfill all your criteria?

They could say: it's entertaining/interesting/pleasurable, they could say that knowledge/insights are contained in books, that different/interesting perspectives and other people's thoughts are contained in books (which are objective facts), etc. Saying 'it makes you smarter' is vague and unconvincing.

>How do you filter out the good from the bad/useless?

You try them for yourself. Accept no substitutes for this.

Unless (and even if) you choose to live your life as a sort of survey of all possible human practices, the things you will never have the chance to try will vastly outnumber the things you try.

Also, many practices confer the best benefits after a significant time commitment, so even if you optimize for number of things, you still won't actually be experiencing them in the same way as their proponents do.

Given the vast amount of experiences, practices, and tools available to us, I think it's pretty reasonable that most people seek out at least some level of external curation.

Sure, but the person I replied to seemed quite adamant and specific in rejecting external curation.

He wants to know for sure, he'll have to see for himself. That's actually one of the very useful generalizable lessons you can learn on this path.

Of course you won't be able to experience everything? That's a feature of the universe. You won't even be able to hear about everything. It's up to the individual to decide their breadth/depth ratio, but at a certain point you need to, pardon my french, "shit or get off the pot".

I'm not going to try ground rhino horn, nor snake oil containing mercury compounds. That suggestion is ridiculous.

It's ridiculous because it's a strawman: The topic of conversation was meditation.

Very simply, meditation is an attempt at single-pointed concentration. It involves cultivating awareness of the mind's contents and the ability to let thoughts pass without fixation. "Zoning out in the shower" probably means something more like daydreaming, where any and all thoughts are permitted to exist without active control. Focusing intently on a difficult cognitive task ("flow state") is more akin to meditation than zoning out.

A lot of beginners are so bad at this that some amount of guiding back to the goal is helpful. Many can only go a few seconds without getting fixated on passing thoughts.

Practicing one's ability to focus on a single thing and reducing mind-wandering will improve one's capability for concentration.

You're talking about Samatha-vipassanā which is the cultivation of stable attention and mindfulness as two skills. Your skill can be measured by the nine stages of tranquility:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samatha-vipassan%C4%81#:~:text...

But this is only one form of meditation. There are others, such as Maitrī/mettā meditation.

I think they’re just focussing on the Samatha concentration aspect?

"immersion" as a better translation than "concentration", suggested by Sujato

(can't remember their exact chat about that EBT translation compared to Bodhi or Brahm in whichever of the miriad of Buddhist Society of Western Australia talk/retreat videos I heard it discussed)

e.g. in https://suttacentral.net/mn44/en/sujato

mindfulness of body sensation, feeling, thought and principle bringing enough equanimity to start ignoring it all really easy, though the moral aspect can't be separated because doing not wholesome actions will leave you thinking about them

That is a pretty convincing and intuitive take, thank you.

> What are the objective benefits of meditation - what is the exact/specific process and what specifically does it accomplish?

There is no one form of meditation, and each practice has different results, but the majority of them share proven reductions in anxiety, stress, depression, and improvements in all sorts of gauges of mental well being.

One of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism is the interdependence of all phenomena [1], and when you begin your practice you'll start seeing that when you sit, you might notice less daily anxiety, which might translate into better physical health. Or you might notice that being slightly less depressed makes you engage in your relationships with friends and family better. You might notice that your hips open up, which might mean less lower back pain.

The point being there are tons of positive benefits from a meditation practice that don't include some metaphysical nonsense that might be hard to take at face value. As my meditation teacher often emphasizes, if the practice doesn't deal with your day to day, quotidian problems of being alive, then it's just nice philosophy and nothing else. The Buddha taught that we should put first things first, and that's dealing with the suffering and stress of our lives. [2]

Also, "zoning out" is pretty much the opposite of meditation. Meditation is to be fully without distraction, whereas "zoning out" is giving in completely to the distraction.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Poisoned_Arrow

> How is 'guided' meditation when you're actively listening to someone else even the same thing?

Generally speaking, meditation shouldn't be interrupted by too many instructions. Most common is no instructions during meditation, or instructions only when a shift in practice is being done. Otherwise, most of the instructions are before starting meditation.

It’s very subtle and to be honest if you need to be sold on it it’s probably not going to help you much. It can be as simple as having half an hour where you can put everything (including yourself) down and stop poking at it, compounded over time there are some benefits, but yeah i don’t think it’s something that needs to be sold or gamified etc.

> if you need to be sold on it it’s probably not going to help you much

This seems like a red flag because it can be used to justify anything, even being in a cult. I think there probably are benefits to some of these things, but we shouldn't shut down when someone asks what the mechanism is. Perhaps they want to get some of those benefits, but want to go about it a different way, and therefore want to know how they might go about doing that.

Telling them that someone who wants to be "sold" on it isn't going to benefit just makes the whole thing seem less legit, IMO.

Well, disclaimer — I am a practicing zen buddhist, but it’s something I came to myself, we aren’t recruiting like religions, and there is no dogma or origin myth to believe in.

You’re unlikely to see a buddhist missionary asking if you’ve heard to truth about emptiness on a street corner ;)

My point was simply that, at least in my personal experience, if i had found zen as a tool to achieve something, e.g it was sold to me as having some effect other, it would not have worked.

>You’re unlikely to see a buddhist missionary asking if you’ve heard to truth about emptiness on a street corner ;)

And if you do, kill him! ;)

> You’re unlikely to see a buddhist missionary asking if you’ve heard to truth about emptiness on a street corner ;)

That made me lol, because yes I've never experienced that. But then I remembered that SGI had a lot of controversy due to their aggressive proselytizing in Japan in the 20th century. [1]

Also, we do have to bear witness to Theravadin monks in Myanmar advocating for (and participating in) genocide against the Rohingya due to their religious beliefs. Similarly in Sri Lanka against Tamils and Muslim populations there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dsei_Toda#Aggressive_pro...

I think the problem is that when you look at a brain from the inside, a lot of it looks irrational. Someone explaining a feeling or a mechanism based on thoughts to someone looking at that brain from the outside will have to bridge billions of neurons standing in between them. Nobody, not even a neuroscientist can do that, with any scientific rigor.

Meditation can be a very subjective experience and the benefits are often not immediate clear to the person practising. Hence it is hard to articulate. Best thing one can do is to just give it a try. It is not for everyone though.

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