61–70 of 103 posts
People 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.
The conflation of Buddhism and Yoga is orientalism and confuses everything in this article. Funny results though.
[0] https://www.theonion.com/monk-gloats-over-yoga-championship-...
I 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 mon…
Which is exactly what I said in my original post.
> Regarding to what is news worthy and therefore publishable on news: whatever makes money
I'm usually pretty cynical but I do at least wish we could hold news to a higher standard than "Make money".
People 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).
You can see the egos as big as the sun in certain areas. Go down to Miami Beach and yoga is a competitive sport. It’s so fake and so phony and you’ve got people spending $200/hr for yoga/meditation sessions and it’s completely bonkers.
Remember seeing that "Yoga with goats" class? Or "Yoga with kittens" in the studio.
It's a great example of first-world privilege and "living in the bubble" that we do here.
So 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.
The early pioneers of LSD believed in ego death and yet had huge egos that only got bigger with successive doses.
People 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).
Before modern times it makes you starve and die, because you didn't feel like you need to be selfish to take precautions for winter and put the needs of others first.
Today, it'll prevent you from becoming well off and free from corporate bullshit, because you don't really have ambition. So you have to work for the rest of your life in some middle class job.
Having a big ego is bad, having no ego is bad.
You need to figure out in which situations you need a big ego and in which you need none.