Buddha and Mind
neh.gov
Buddha and Mind
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Re: Buddha and Mind
#2The article's author, smugly waits to reveal his wokeness until the very last paragraph. Apart from that, it's mainly rubbish.
"This ahistorical reinterpretation of Buddhism can certainly seem like a breath of fresh air to the modern white, upper-middle class Westerner, who, disillusioned with the Christianity or the Judaism of her upbringing, is still not fully satisfied with what our secular culture has to offer."
Re: Buddha and Mind
#3This is kind of unrelated but whenever discussions on meditation come up here, especially recently ones that have mentioned the dangers around it, I am reminded that my lineage stresses that meditation should not be undertaken until one has sufficient preparation with simpler practices, such as karma yoga (service orientated worship). The perspective is that if you start these practices before "calming down" (like being easy to anger, easily distracted in thoughts) that it can be very dangerous to learn these higher practices - that you can easily become even more depressed, angry or insane than when you started.
I've seen a number of articles on HN talking about people becoming depressed, depersonalized and so on after trying mindfulness meditation and I find it anecdotally interesting that it lines up with the teachings I am familiar with.
Re: Buddha and Mind
#4The article's author, smugly waits to reveal his wokeness until the very last paragraph. Apart from that, it's mainly rubbish. "This ahistorical reinterpretation of Buddhism can certainly seem like a breath of fresh air to the modern white, upper-middle class Westerner, who, disillusioned with the Christianity or the Judaism of her upbringing, is still not fully satisfied with what our secular culture has to offer."
Kind of riffing off of that, I think that there would be less atheists in America if more of them were exposed to Hinduism.
Re: Buddha and Mind
#5This is kind of unrelated but whenever discussions on meditation come up here, especially recently ones that have mentioned the dangers around it, I am reminded that my lineage stresses that meditation should not be undertaken until one has sufficient preparation with simpler practices, such as karma yoga (service orientated worship). The perspective is that if you start these practices before "calming down" (like be…
Many of the activities I've done in the service of tantric meditation have required an intense catharsis before continuing to the calm. All of that is one meditation.
Re: Buddha and Mind
#6The article's author, smugly waits to reveal his wokeness until the very last paragraph. Apart from that, it's mainly rubbish. "This ahistorical reinterpretation of Buddhism can certainly seem like a breath of fresh air to the modern white, upper-middle class Westerner, who, disillusioned with the Christianity or the Judaism of her upbringing, is still not fully satisfied with what our secular culture has to offer."
Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article and then rush into the HN comments to get angry about it. That leads to generic tangents, which are particularly predictable and tedious—and usually get nasty.
The idea here is to have curious conversation. For that, a better practice would be to bring in the most interesting thing from an article, or the thing that creates more interesting responses in you.
One way of looking at this is to take the following guideline to apply at the article level as well:
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
Re: Buddha and Mind
#7This is kind of unrelated but whenever discussions on meditation come up here, especially recently ones that have mentioned the dangers around it, I am reminded that my lineage stresses that meditation should not be undertaken until one has sufficient preparation with simpler practices, such as karma yoga (service orientated worship). The perspective is that if you start these practices before "calming down" (like be…
Worry not, for secular meditation does not get that far. Otherwise we'd have seen a psychosis pandemic vis-à-vis Calm.com's 40 million app installs.
Re: Buddha and Mind
#8Meditation is about quieting ones mind to ultimate stillness. This is where the ego disolves which is not exactly in alignment with the culturally dominant materialism that we find surrounding us (i.e. the quest for money power and status) all things that rely on an inflated ego.
Using meditation to improve in moving up in society is like using wood logs to put out a fire.
Re: Buddha and Mind
#9This is kind of unrelated but whenever discussions on meditation come up here, especially recently ones that have mentioned the dangers around it, I am reminded that my lineage stresses that meditation should not be undertaken until one has sufficient preparation with simpler practices, such as karma yoga (service orientated worship). The perspective is that if you start these practices before "calming down" (like be…
Worry not, for secular meditation does not get that far. Otherwise we'd have seen a psychosis pandemic vis-à-vis Calm.com's 40 million app installs.
what's app installs got to do with meditation? i guess that's your point though.