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The Problem of Mindfulness

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Re: The Problem of Mindfulness

#91

Post by apatters »

edejong wrote: post #16
rufugee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. In my case, mindfulness practice (at the moment with the Waking Up app from Sam Harris) has transformed my life in three short months. I thought I was insightful and deep before, yet was a victim of ephemeral thoughts and emotions far more than I realized. At no time have I given myself a pass or shirked responsibility in the way the article implies...rather, mindfulness practice has given me the time and qu…

The problem with the mindfulness approach is that it only leads you knee-deep. Enough to enjoy the waves and the joy of water, but too little to start swimming. For example, I can still see you are not accepting your past self for what it is ("I thought I was insightful and deep before") or how the world is ("would be a FAR better place"). You are on a path towards awakening. Some of us have come to understand that t…

Now that Buddhists like you are coming in here and telling us to be more Buddhist and read and think Buddhist things, I think it's important to stress that anyone interested in mindfulness doesn't need to become a Buddhist.

In fact there is a clinical application of mindfulness which is called cognitive behavioral therapy, it is proven through research to have great benefits for a lot of people, it is secular, and unlike Buddhism, it has never been a justification for murder and ethnic cleansing.

We should strip away the religion and focus on the scientifically studied and observed benefits, in my opinion.

Re: The Problem of Mindfulness

#92

Post by kr4 »

jonbronson wrote: post #8

While there are a lot of truths in this article, there's also a thread of misconception running through it, embodied most prominently in the line "Without some ownership of one’s feelings and thoughts, it is difficult to take responsibility for them." Mindfulness is about creating space between you and your thoughts, not ignoring or discounting them. It allows you to look at them subjectively, rather than being carri…

Right. Living mindfully simply means that I'm aware of my gestures, words and actions. A good meditation does just that. For this awareness to remain at all times with you, a certain sense of detachment is inevitable but that doesn't imply that you are no longer supposed to care about what's going inside you. IN fact it should be opposite; once you're aware of content of your mind, you need to do cleansing to rise above conditioning that binds you [0].

0: In Mind Full to Mindful (book on Zen/mindful meditation https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Full-Mindful-Wisdom-Monks-ebook/... ) Om Swami has given a method to do Emotional Hygiene and Cleansing (Osoji). It is about emptying the baggage we carry in our minds. Believing Zen, if everything is empty, we may as well realize that essence in practice and not think of it merely as a philosophical proposition.

Re: The Problem of Mindfulness

#93

Post by calais »

stevebmark wrote: post #2

Mindfulness was a major step forward in the exploration of the self, at least for western culture. I see this criticism as the next step forward. I too have felt some ambiguous disconnect between mindfulness and experience that this essay does a good job capturing. The goal of mindfulness is to make you realize you don't exist, and to try to reach a state where you don't exist, and teach you that your thoughts aren't…

Metzinger, Being No One (2004) may be just the step forward to which you refer. The prereflexive sense of self (as, say, a point-source of will and identity) is empirically inaccurate and faulty, and Metzinger attacks philosophy grounded in this untranscendable experience. But, unlike many philosophers, European or Buddhist, who satisfy to negate the ontological status of the self, Metzinger develops a theory of the self which is conceptually constrained by clinical medicine's empirical totality.

Two warnings about Metzinger, though: (1) a mood leaks through his writing, a sort of nihilistic determinism that his rigorous philosophy relentlessly evokes, but which his assertions do not imply; and (2) it is quite difficult reading, like a new Kant, lucid yet dense, requiring of a layman to assiduously infer and integrate the language of cognitive science.

Re: The Problem of Mindfulness

#94

Post by chewz »

randallsquared wrote: post #58
Barrin92 wrote: post #38

the thing that rubs me the wrong way about mindfulness is how it sits neatly between secularism, spirituality and obsessive self-improvement, it's exactly the sort of thing "high performers" who are full of themselves are drawn to. No value commitments, little meaningful connection to the real world, it's the sort of replacement for religiousness you expect to find in a tech mecca, which is of course where it has bee…

> A few years ago it was reading [Marcus Aurelius] and the stoics Well, Stoicism turns out to be difficult.

> Well, Stoicism turns out to be difficult.

SV couldn't make an app for that.. and profit

Re: The Problem of Mindfulness

#95

Post by chewz »

username90 wrote: post #85

Some studies have shown that mindfulness helps, but is it the actual "mindfulness" or is it the pause from life that helps? The alternative should not be to do nothing, but to for example take a slow walk or a nice shower. I'd bet that taking a walk would actually provide more benefits than meditation and mindfulness since it is coupled with exercise. Personally I have gotten nothing from mindfulness and meditation,…

Gardening is the new mindfulness. :-)

Also sailing non-stop for nine weeks in the ocean had been for me much better experience (in terms of emptying mind and getting in touch with myself) then any retreat (and I did some).

Re: The Problem of Mindfulness

#96

Post by chewz »

sshekhar wrote: post #11

The word mindfulness itself is a poor translation of the Pali word 'Sati'. The Pali word actually means 'remembering to be aware of the objects that your mind is attending to'. There is no word in western languages to capture that phrase and hence word 'mindfulness' was used to convey in a confusing manner what 'Sati' means. I have been meditating for 1 hour to 1.5 hour every day for several years and I finally got i…

You should consult therapist as you are in danger of harming yourself.

Re: The Problem of Mindfulness

#97

Post by chewz »

Mirioron wrote: post #83

Does mindfulness work for everybody? I've read plenty about its effects on some people and read about how it seems to work on average, but is it something that helps everyone that tries it or are some people less benefited by it?

> Does mindfulness work for everybody?

Deepends on your karma.

People who start meditating often get on a pink cloud and they mistake that for a proof that meditation is working for them. As this feeling washes away with time some people get disapointed and give up while some try chasing it. Sort of like chasing runners high.

[meditation as any other sport attracts certain number of narcistic over-achievers with compulsion for controling reality]

But some people - no matter what attracted them to meditation - make suprising progress.

Also some people had been meditators in past lifes so they are naturals :-)

PS. Bear in mind that insight meditation / mindfulness is styling itself as millenia old practice but in fact had been created in 2nd part of XIX century as reaction to British colonialism.

First teaching of fan-down meditation for laypeople took place in Rangoon in 1911. Silicon Valey took it recently to next level with 10 minutes a day mindfulness apps.

Does it work? Well there are also 7-pushups-a-day apps. Do they work? Do they provide same benefits as professional years long athlete training?

https://tricycle.org/magazine/meditation-en-masse/

Re: The Problem of Mindfulness

#98

Post by cggart »

I’m a bit taken aback by the answers here. Everyone is throwing around terms like knowing, evaluating, observing with the assumption that they are in a position to be doing these thing effectively? What is the epistemological foundation your espousing?

I think one post asked the rhetorical question “who is in a position to know yourself better than yourself?”

To which I might reply: “Anyone but your yourself — especially your present self?”

There seams to be a ton of hubris and confusion of goals and objectives here.

Most of these posts don’t talk about growing but conquering. They use mindfulness as a tool to “learn about themselves” so that they might avoid themselves.

This might feel great, but it’s delusion.

The best way humans have figured out how to know anything is reciprocal accountability coupled with objectivity.

That either means opening up about your emotions honestly and presently with another person you love/trust, or writing down (or otherwise recording) your observations so you might evaluate them later over time.

We are more than ourselves, part of a collective, both presently amongst ourselves, and in time.

The measure of knowledge is how well our evaluations resonate with others and ourselves in time.

Mindfulness just allows us to make observations, not communicate them, or judge them accurately.

Frankly, the best way to communicate an emotion is often to embody it. It can also be the best way to observe it.

That’s how artists make art.

What matters isn’t what we feel but how we respond.

Mindfulness is a defense mechanism we use for short term relief from our emotions. It gives a vantage point, not the vantage point. It is a tool, and one that comes at the cost of using other just as valid tools.

Ultimately the measure of our well being doesn’t reside with our present selves alone. We err in so far as we forget this in my opinion.

Re: The Problem of Mindfulness

#99

Post by amriksohata »

Ask a Hindu sage, the word mindfulness is literally as the article describes, a watered down version. The same has happened to yoga, it's all commercialised but in Hinduism yoga has a different purpose and use but it's been stripped of its best values just as a physical thing. Mindfulness is bhakti in Hinduism, a type of mediation but it's been taken by the west and made into something different

Re: The Problem of Mindfulness

#100

Post by keymone »

kr4 wrote: post #89
keymone wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you tell true enlightenment from an opinion that one has achieved enlightenment?

http://omswami.com/2018/04/enlightenment.html In my personal experience, enlightenment is realizing, at the depth of my being, this prospective that nothing, absolutely nothing in this world, including my body, relationships, wealth and my possessions are going to last for ever; everything is impermanent and my problems are extremely tiny compare to the immensity of the universe, so I should take it easy and live lif…

This doesn’t answer my question.
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