The data is fascinating, but the conclusion that this is somehow apposed to Buddhism is just absurd. A healthy sense of self worth does not stand in the way of eliminating the view of a separate, persistent self for the betterment of all beings.
People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study
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Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study
#22I don't want to be "that guy" but... why is this news? It's fairly self-evident in our culture. Just look at the way the people who practice these are portrayed in media. (at least when it's set in the west in modern times) The study itself is valuable, I'm not against testing things that are "obvious". Just that when the culturally accepted result is upheld by the study, it's not generally worth reporting on IMO.
It is worth reporting in a scientific article though. Null-results, everything should be reported and accessible somewhere. The reproducibility crisis should be stopped, otherwise I can just claim whatever I want and be as wrong as the social scientists who have trouble finding any verifiable fact.
Regarding to what is news worthy and therefore publishable on news: whatever makes money, I wouldn't know what makes money in that regard.
Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study
#23That's weird, usually people claim the opposite. Perhaps perceiving having less of an ego is actually a symptom of having a huge ego. I wouldn't know; I've barely got an ego at all.
Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study
#24>> Though yoga and meditation were originally intended as ways to calm the ego, many non-Buddhist practitioners do these activities with an eye to self-improvement or calming personal anxieties. I have noticed meditation being pitched more and more as a self-help/productivity tool/cure all for a range of issues. Is the main difference between 'traditional' (for lack of a better word) and Western meditation just the m…
I don't think westerners are missing anything, at least not anything more than people who live in places where Buddhism is typically practiced. I'm western, I live in Thailand, I'm a meditator, and I often feel like some Buddhist scholar compared to Thai people. I think many people feel Buddhism is sort of re-blooming in the west, of course with its own style. There are a bunch of highly respected western monks now, even in the Thai forest tradition.
I think it's just easy to get confused about this stuff. There's the goal, there's how the goal is supposed to be accomplished, there's what you actually do every day, and there are various related practices. It's easy to get confused and think that the things that are happening are the point, like that calming down is the point, or that rapture is the point, or even that bowing to monks a certain way or donating things to the temple is the point.
Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study
#25The conflation of Buddhism and Yoga is orientalism and confuses everything in this article. Funny results though.
Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study
#26Assuming that they just used breathing meditation (the most popular form of meditation), then I wouldn't be surprised. It's just one form of meditation to bring calmness to a busy mind.
Other religions like Buddhism, also have analytical meditation which they use to minimize/eliminate the ego to obtain nirvana/enlightenment.
Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study
#27So if meditation and yoga don't help the average person in this way, perhaps we need to change the meaning of MAGA to Make Acid Great Again. LSD induced ego death could be our new national high school graduation ritual.
Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study
#28People need to understand that the stuff like meditation that's popular right now and gets taught is just a very small subset of Buddhist practice. Real Buddhist teachings go much further. Same for yoga. Yoga is meant to be a way of life but what most Westerners see is just a form of aerobics with a few spiritual words sprinkled in.
Ironically, the biggest evidence of this here might be the idea that the ego should be kept as small as possible. Whether or not it's a real thing, it still needs maintenance (arguably a huge benefit of meditation), and there's probably a healthy size (though I hate this spatial metaphor; people are far more complex than that).
It’s walled so I can’t read it. But my impressions make this sound like yet another concept ripped from religion or philosophy into psychology/sociology - and not kept whole, in context, or even given an honest consideration.
Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study
#29I’m quite sure yoga classes (more so teachers) that focus on Buddhist philosophy are few and far between, in the West. The majority are fitness classes.
It seems like they’ve deliberately drawn an extremely broad conclusion.
It would be very interesting to run this kind of study focusing / assessment for students of specific teachers, types of yoga or lineages of teaching.
Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study
#30I wonder if doing any form of work or exercise would increase someone's ego...?
I've been performing an experiment the last two years were I don't really do anything outside of work. I just sit on the couch being a fat piece of shit. No exercise. No Yoga. No mediation. I think it has helped me keep my ego under control, and foster a healthy amount of self hatred.