Maybe we should have listened to the people who are Zen Buddhists about how reaching satori is incredibly difficult?
Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws
31–40 of 147 posts
Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws
#32I normally wouldn't weigh in here, since I am the furthest thing possible from an expert, but after even a little dabbling in meditation I can see some major misconceptions in the other comments.
It isn't about being bored, or about any of the benefits that may or may not occur.
Meditation is a useful discipline because it is about training the mind to (a) become conscious of and "reify" individual thoughts and sensations, and (b) direct and maintain attention consciously, rather than the usual unconscious process by which our minds flit from thought to thought.
Once you have these skills you can (presumably) use them for other things and to achieve various effects. But it starts there.
Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws
#33As somebody with clinical anxiety, I have been prescribed CBT and Mindfulness on the NHS, I think this piece misses several key points. For one thing, NICE (the UK NGO responsible for analysing evidence and making recommendations on the efficacy of treatments and their cost effectiveness) and an all-party Parliamentary group found signifcant evidence to recommend Mindfulness as a treatment for anxiety and mild depres…
I agree. But one of the problems NICE finds is the variable quality of what "mindfulness" actually is. Can an app deliver mindfulness? Can an MP3? Can it be self-delivered? Is there a difference between group work and solo work? If a mental health professional gives a patient a link to HeadSpace has that MH professional delivered a mindfulness treatment? And NICE are sometimes giving DO NOT recommendations for mindfu…
I'm not surprised they recommend against it for social anxiety. I've dealt with (relatively low levels of) social anxiety myself, and I also do mindfulness meditation, and while I thing mindfulness can be useful in understanding the mental impulses ("why did I not say hi to that person even though I badly wanted to?") and have made me a lot more acutely aware of the impulses driving how I act in social situations, it alone has done nothing to alter that behavior or the anxieties around it.
In my case my anxieties were limited enough that while I won't say I've completely gotten rid of it, I got over most it by applying my own gradual exposure - I spent months setting myself challenges of e.g. getting eye contact with and saying hi, or "how are you?" in "low stress" situations like to cashiers or other "captive" audiences. It not only reduced my anxieties but was a big eye opener in terms of social interactions in general (peoples responses changed dramatically). [note: I don't recommend people do this if they face severe anxiety - see a therapist; it worked for me, but probably largely because my anxiety was mild]
I'd think mindfulness might be useful for someone with social anxiety after they have the actual anxiety under control, though, as a way to further improve social skills, just like for people without anxiety. But I'm not surprised it's not a good choice as a replacement for other therapy or drugs to get the anxiety itself under control.
[EDIT: As an example of the awareness it brought to me, one thing I hate is making phone calls, and mindfulness has not stopped that, but one thing mindfulness has done was making me aware of avoidance behaviors, such as letting me more easily "catch myself out" when I use silly excuses for going to pointless lengths to e.g. seek out information online instead of making a two minute phone call; it didn't make me feel less anxious about the call but may have had a limited effect in making it more easily apparent to me which things I are worth addressing using other methods]
Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws
#34Tangential, but has anyone else noticed a surge in newsweek links here and on reddit? I feel like they hired some consultants.
It's really easy to check if numbers of submission have increased.
Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been to “mindfulness events” for executives and corporate, where people claim to let go of their ego only to look down on anyone who is not as “open minded “ as they are. "In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few." --- Shunryu Suzuki
I don't get how that quote relates to the parent post, can you clarify?
The quote refers to an idea in Zen Buddhism called shoshin, or "beginner's mind". The general idea is that the more you believe you are an expert on a subject, the more closed off you become to new ideas and ways you can improve. Instead, shoshin encourages you to approach all things with eagerness of a beginning.
If you're interested, you should read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, which is a short book collecting some of Suzuki's teachings.
Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meditation has massive potential for very real, profound experiences. There is much that science doesn't understand about our bodies yet but that has been empirically discovered over the millenia. Meditation can certainly be boring, but it's not necessarily training yourself to be bored. There are many different facets depending on the style of meditation you practice: * Zen might get you enquire into yourself why yo…
(1) is often mentioned as a benefit of mindfulness meditation, but it always puzzled me; first, it seems something everyone does to some degree - thinking "I'm being paranoid" is essentially that recognition, no? Second, it's always missing the second part: and then what? One can recognize an optical illusion as one, but that knowledge doesn't make it fade away. I mean, it can help to know, but it seems there's step…
This is a bit tricky to explain.
It's a shift in perception to something that lets you view thoughts without getting caught up in them. So countering one thought with another isn't it because then you're still in thoughts. However...
The reason this is tricky is because a logical process can be used to reach this realisation - indeed I experienced this state while working with the koan "Who am I?" on a Zen retreat. As I continued to ask myself that question I "took myself apart". I deduced that "I" wasn't my body (because when I sleep my body remains but "I" don't), that I wasn't my thoughts (because I can observe them), nor the other "aggregates" as they're called in Buddhism. The one that I'd struggled with was my awareness, but I realised "I" wasn't even that.
Through this process of logical deduction I realised on some deeper level that I just fundamentally didn't need to pay any attention at all to my thoughts. They became as insignificant as if someone had left a radio on. Note that this is different to just the usual meditative technique of observing thoughts. At this stage, there is no technique involved, it's just how you operate at that time.
So then what? I just ignored them! Totally. I didn't try to shut them off, I literally didn't care if they were there, and I didn't pay any attention to them. In doing so I just felt so at peace. I didn't need to do anything to reach step 2. There is no step 2 :-D.
This is called "non-doing" in Taoism, and this serenity is claimed to be our "natural" state - that's to say if you view our continual pandering to thoughts as "unnatural", which it did strike me as. More like a big, habitual mistake to be honest. I guess this is also called "transcending the ego".
So I'd stand around at this farm where the retreat was happening. I didn't care that there were sheep in the field, but there were. I didn't care when it rained or if it didn't. At meal times I could see when something needed doing, and I did it, but I didn't care for it. I just felt deeply contented.
So it's very different from recognising an optical illusion, unless it's at a level where the recognition goes to your core and causes you to absolutely ignore your thinking mind, and not feed thoughts on any level (even sub-vocally).
Now the tricky part is it's so habitual to fall back into listening to your mind. I haven't experienced that state since the retreat (although it did last for a couple of weeks). However, it proved to me beyond doubt that it exists. It also has made me re-evaluate my life, why I do what I do, and what's important to me.
Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws
#37"Mindfulness" is an occult method. End of discussion. It can be, and has been studied not by science, but by people working with the occult.
And mindfulness is more of a byproduct of meditation, controlled breathing, or other techniques that Shiva told Shakti.
We'll eventually be able to analyse these things in the words of science. But not yet. If you're looking for proof, you will be looking for a very long time, unless you're willing to do the research on yourself. And then, N=1 research usually isn't looked highly upon.
EDIT: How nice. -1's and hidden by a moderator. Somehow, something I said was "wrong", or more likely disagreed with someone's world view. But instead of discussing, it's easier to hide. Pity. I expected better from a group of people who claimed to like science.
Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws
#38Few years ago, I read an article about mindfulness on HN, and it finally clicked with me, why some people recommended me to meditate, and I dismissed it because I was too skeptical. I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored, and through that, focus better on a single task that is boring but you have to do it. It probably isn't a cure for everything, but looked at this way, it is still quite usefu…
> I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored... There is a vast landscape of meditation practices from numerous traditions that focus on different aspects, but I think your comment is an extremely poor characterization of them. It's bit like describing playing guitar or piano as "moving your fingers in some specific patterns." Uh, no.
Maybe refine it to training yourself to accept being bored. In the sense of paying pure attention to what your are doing without judging it. This is the core focus of some forms of zen practice for example. There are clearly meditation practices which seeks other goals, but mere judgement free acceptance is an important goal for some.
E.g. you're doing dishes. It may be boring, but boring is a judgement. Set aside the judgement and there is just the act of doing the dishes, which is neither good or bad in itself, it just is. The outcome may be good (clean dishes), but the act itself is just sensory input and muscular impulses that you let rise and fall in your mind.
As such it is a practice in not letting yourself be affected by things you do not want to be affected by. The feeling of boredom that may arise if you let it, is just another object to meditate on. Learn to set it aside, and a lot of objections to doing "boring" tasks falls away.
Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored... There is a vast landscape of meditation practices from numerous traditions that focus on different aspects, but I think your comment is an extremely poor characterization of them. It's bit like describing playing guitar or piano as "moving your fingers in some specific patterns." Uh, no.
I think OP is correct, it just wasn't stated as well as it could've been. Meditation (at least some practice forms) is an act of forcing boredom upon yourself AND exploring how your mind's default settings react in that environment. There is a reason why focusing on something like your breath is recommended vs. focusing on the television (breath is boring!). “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to si…
> “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
A quote from Blaise Pascal, a philosopher who spent a lot of time sitting quietly, alone, thinking.
Great quote, but he was probably talking about thinking, rather than meditation.
Re: Much of the research around meditation and mindfulness has serious flaws
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I have since understood it as training yourself to being bored... There is a vast landscape of meditation practices from numerous traditions that focus on different aspects, but I think your comment is an extremely poor characterization of them. It's bit like describing playing guitar or piano as "moving your fingers in some specific patterns." Uh, no.
I think OP is correct, it just wasn't stated as well as it could've been. Meditation (at least some practice forms) is an act of forcing boredom upon yourself AND exploring how your mind's default settings react in that environment. There is a reason why focusing on something like your breath is recommended vs. focusing on the television (breath is boring!). “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to si…
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