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My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

danlawton.substack.com

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Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#81

Post by denton-scratch »

Lapsed Buddhist here.

> The Arahat Daniel M. Ingram

According to the instruction I received, there have been no arahants since a few decades after the death of the Buddha. Choose your teacher carefully. Many meditation teachers are charlatans; watch out especially for those who claim to be enlightened.

> The type of meditation I had been practicing was jhana

...or "dhyana", if you go with the Sanskrit version.

The OP spends a lot of his words talking about "mindfulness" and the industry associated with it. But if he was practising the dhyanas, he was NOT practising mindfulness as such. Practising the dhyanas is serious, headbanging stuff, involving deep, single-pointed concentration. The dhyanas build on mindfulness, which is really a basis for all practice; but single-pointed concentration is almost the opposite of normal mindfulness practice.

The OP is correct that the "mindfulness industry" blames the faults of meditators for bad experiences. I've known people who survived bad experiences with meditation, but who were finally broken by being gaslighted by their teacher.

The "mindfulness industry" minimises the risks of meditation practice. The industry generally claims to be secular, or at least, to not depend on a religious interpretation. If you folllow an openly-religious meditation teacher, you shouldn't hear that reassuring touchy-feely nonsense; instead you will be told that the path you have embarked on is dangerous, and that if you aren't prepared to stick it out to the end, then it would be better not to begin.

And if you arrive at meditation as a result of psychiatric problems, step away quickly. You need to be mentally fit to undertake meditation practise.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#82

Post by shmageggy »

cyberpunk wrote: post #74
shmageggy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the kind of inappropriate advice that the author is cautioning against. He was not just starting out, he had experienced teachers, and the horriffic panic-attack-like state he was not something that could have been addressed by "returning to the moment".

He was an instructor in "Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction" -- sorry, this is not a real thing. He's been teaching things he clearly does not understand, and his mind was blown by this. When I say "a teacher would tell you to come back to the moment" it's not quite as simple as I make it sound, the key thing is who the advice is coming from (read: an actual zen teacher who has received transmission, not a charlatan…

So, to clarify, you are aligning with the view he's opposing in the article that if someone has a profoundly negative experience due to meditation they're just "doing it wrong". That the practice, when done a certain way, carries 0% risk for very bad effects?

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#83

Post by eurasiantiger »

jgilias wrote: post #75
eurasiantiger wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meditation under the influence, on the other hand, is a door to the ocean.

Do you swim in it in eternal bliss? Or do you drown in it?

Does ”you” ”swimming” or ”drowning” ”in” spatially experienced consciousness make sense?

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#85

Post by denton-scratch »

coldtea wrote: post #25

> When Buddhism Goes Bad - How My Mindfulness Practice Led Me To Meltdown Well, meditation and buddhism are supposed to be a way of life, not a stress reliever or a passtime. You can't be living like a modern westerner in the rat race and do buddhism on the side (or merely try to half-follow some general tenets in your everyday totally non-bhudist life). Or rather you can, and thousands do, and there are fancy retrea…

> but then you're a tourist to the whole thing

There is a "householder" tradition in Tibetan Buddhism: you can be an advanced practitioner and teacher, while running a family and a farm. The classic example is Marpa. Marpa was no tourist.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#86

Post by stelonix »

cyberpunk wrote: post #63
rolleiflex wrote: post #12

Since this is a long article, here’s a summary for fellow readers — it’s mostly about the negative side effects of meditation that the author believes is under-documented or under-reported due to the ‘hype’ of meditation as the 21st century cure-all. He talks about dissociative experiences (which is well documented in medical research), it being a pseudo-religion, and lastly, his belief that the extended use of medit…

These sorts of things have been dealt with for centuries by Buddhists, it’s a fairly common effect when you start with Zazen. This is why taking one part of the practice and abandoning the rest (most specifically, an experienced teacher) isn’t a great idea for everyone. Most of the time all you need to hear is “just let whatever comes up during Zazen go, and return to the moment” but alas, if you don’t things can go…

This is exactly what I took from it. He uses the terms "mindfulness" and "Buddhism" interchangeably, but they're not. Buddhism has ways to deal with meditations that "go bad", but mindfulness takes the Buddhism out of the practice.

Mindfulness is not Buddhism.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#87

Post by cyberpunk »

shmageggy wrote: post #82
cyberpunk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was an instructor in "Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction" -- sorry, this is not a real thing. He's been teaching things he clearly does not understand, and his mind was blown by this. When I say "a teacher would tell you to come back to the moment" it's not quite as simple as I make it sound, the key thing is who the advice is coming from (read: an actual zen teacher who has received transmission, not a charlatan…

So, to clarify, you are aligning with the view he's opposing in the article that if someone has a profoundly negative experience due to meditation they're just "doing it wrong". That the practice, when done a certain way, carries 0% risk for very bad effects?

Yes, essentially.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#88

Post by weavie »

It should be noted that in the introduction to Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, Daniel does say:

> people who do strong and intensive practice can hurt them- selves and freak out. Just as serious athletes can hurt their bodies when they take a misstep or push themselves beyond their limits, just so serious mental athletes can strain their minds, brains, and nervous systems, and strained brains can sometimes function in very strange ways.

> To rewrite the operating system rapidly while it is running doesn’t always go so well in the short term or occasionally in the long term. Thus, while I will include nearly endless exhorta- tions to find the depths of power and clarity that you are capable of, I will also add numerous warnings about how to keep from frying yourself.

> By “frying yourself”, I mean explicitly severe mood instability and psychotic episodes, as well as other odd biological and energetic disturbances, with some practitioners occasionally ending up in inpatient psychiatric facilities for various periods of time.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#89

Post by denton-scratch »

pantulis wrote: post #8

As with many other types of exercise, practitioners are bound to have injuries. I'd even say the injuries the author suffered are equivalent to breaking a leg while running. This is the take away for me: > "I believe that these practices, with the correct framework, dosage, and education, can be a valuable tool for improving mental health. "

> This is the take away for me

Well, perhaps you haven't read the article; the OP is saying that meditation is dangerous, and that meditation teachers don't warn you of the dangers. Isn't that the opposite of your "take away"?

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#90

Post by stelonix »

shmageggy wrote: post #82
cyberpunk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was an instructor in "Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction" -- sorry, this is not a real thing. He's been teaching things he clearly does not understand, and his mind was blown by this. When I say "a teacher would tell you to come back to the moment" it's not quite as simple as I make it sound, the key thing is who the advice is coming from (read: an actual zen teacher who has received transmission, not a charlatan…

So, to clarify, you are aligning with the view he's opposing in the article that if someone has a profoundly negative experience due to meditation they're just "doing it wrong". That the practice, when done a certain way, carries 0% risk for very bad effects?

No, he's stating what the author seems to have missed: mindfulness is not Buddhism; mindfulness is based on some Buddhist teachings. The author talks about meditation, mindfulness and Buddhism as if it were all the same thing, but that's not true. It just shows that whatever they're selling as "mindfulness" lacks what basic zen teaches. The author is blissfully ignorant of Buddhism and it's not his fault: that's how he learned it. What's his fault is that he's spreading what he learned as if it were truth, which simply isn't.

There's no worldwide buddhist conspiracy to shun the "bad" parts of meditation, the post author learned from teachers with no qualification.

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