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Buddha and Mind

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Re: Buddha and Mind

#51

Post by Finnucane »

tokenpreneur wrote: post #7
chana_masala wrote: post #3

This 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.

The Buddha sought an escape from the state of dukkha, and our western political and economic systems depend on maximizing the state of dukkha.

How do you make ‘self-help’ from a philosophy that teaches that there is no permanent self to help?

Re: Buddha and Mind

#52

Post by sunshineforever »

carrolldunham wrote: post #50

Check out the miserable fate of "Culadasa" (author of the Mind Illuminated) if you want to see what kind of Midas touch situation can come of meditation without the companion practise of virtue, particularly restraint. e: (Midas because the guy claimed to be so "enlightened" and "living in the moment" that he lost the ability to worry about say, other people's feelings, right and wrong, causing harm etc. Acted then i…

Can you link to this story?

Re: Buddha and Mind

#53

Post by carrolldunham »

sunshineforever wrote: post #52
carrolldunham wrote: post #50

Check out the miserable fate of "Culadasa" (author of the Mind Illuminated) if you want to see what kind of Midas touch situation can come of meditation without the companion practise of virtue, particularly restraint. e: (Midas because the guy claimed to be so "enlightened" and "living in the moment" that he lost the ability to worry about say, other people's feelings, right and wrong, causing harm etc. Acted then i…

Can you link to this story?

I don't know if it's summarized somewhere because it is still unfurling over reddit and forum reactions (to the claim against him, then his admission, then his later attempt to back-pedal). I would warn you that there's a lot of time to be wasted addictively trying to unpack what exactly happened here because 1) it's all arguments and interpretation and 2) if you have any interest in using meditation to move toward freedom from desire, here's someone who claimed to spell out exactly how to do that, but then obviously it didn't actually happen because he admitted to acting in a way that implies a high level of sensual desire, grasping and craving etc. - so it brings the whole undertaking into question, right?

My eventual take loosely is that the guy was somewhat of a charlatan/double-minded from the start so, it's fine - it's still worth trying to free yourself of desire you can probably do something like that, and best to go on as if this guy never existed.

Re: Buddha and Mind

#54

Post by xelxebar »

emacsen wrote: post #16
lethologica wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please elaborate more on the dangers of meditation?

This is a difficult topic because it's so fraught with misunderstanding and complexity, but I'd like to share a few thoughts, not all from the OP but from this topic in general. 1. Meditation as a tool for self-improvement Meditation, especially and specifically Buddhist meditation, has been sold to Westerners as a tool for self improvement for the purpose of "getting a leg up" and as another commenter pointed out, t…

> One of the paradoxes of Buddhism, but specifically Zen, is the idea that the practice teaches you to be able to handle enormous stress. Practioners [sic] are taught to stay in meditation through physical distress, through mental distress, even while being hit with sticks, etc. This is a form of training.

Let me pick on this bit, because I have experience here.

That sounds like a crappy, knockoff kind of zen. Any group worth their salt will know the difference. You can have some legitimate, profound, and just plain really engaging and mind-blowing experiences with zen practice, but you gotta practice correctly. Lifting weights any which way is a good way to hurt yourself, but lifting weights correctly can put on some muscle.

On the surface, you're just moving heavy weights around, but that's not really the point. It's the form, consistency, and holistic routine that matters in weight-lifting. In the same way, zen practice might look like it's just beating people with lack of sleep and sticks, but what matters is how these are executed and how they work together. Done correctly, intense willpower and mental fortitude are mostly orthogonal concerns.

Re: Buddha and Mind

#55

Post by Trasmatta »

carrolldunham wrote: post #50

Check out the miserable fate of "Culadasa" (author of the Mind Illuminated) if you want to see what kind of Midas touch situation can come of meditation without the companion practise of virtue, particularly restraint. e: (Midas because the guy claimed to be so "enlightened" and "living in the moment" that he lost the ability to worry about say, other people's feelings, right and wrong, causing harm etc. Acted then i…

My take is that "enlightenment" is a real state the brain can be in, and it can be invoked by meditation, or even spontaneously in some cases. But that this state may not actually have the level of impact on human behavior as many think it should.

In the west we seem to correlate "enlightenment" with some level of "perfection", but I think that's actually pretty far removed from what many eastern traditions consider it. This results in us having weird expectations about how somebody who is "enlightened" should behave.

I think it's totally possible that Culadasa has had the experience of "enlightenment" (a certain state the brain can exist in). But it seems like this state may actually be morally neutral.

There's a reason the Eightfold Path in Buddhism isn't just "meditate really good until you reach enlightenment".

Re: Buddha and Mind

#56

Post by chillwaves »

Barrin92 wrote: post #48

Think the article is right in its diagnosis of mindfulness. Jack Dorsey going on a meditation retreat so he can go back and be even more productive at building the things that send everyone to meditation retreats has always been kind of funny to me. The trend to turn spiritual practices into some sort of self-help healthcare to me is honestly just abysmal. In many ways it is worse than just not doing them at all. C.S…

Why can't just take the cultural lessons of the past for what they are and not believe them literally or completely dismiss them?

Re: Buddha and Mind

#57

Post by peter303 »

cwkoss wrote: post #24

"In meditative states, the monks had remarkable control over their body temperature and oxygen intake. They could use their body heat to dry wet towels placed around them, where most people would shiver uncontrollably. They could raise the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees. Some could even spend a night on a rocky ledge at an elevation of 15,000 feet in the Himalayas, where temperatures f…

I have heard of some success with mental exercises helping cold hand/feet syndrome. That is a fairly common condition for people in the winter.

Re: Buddha and Mind

#58

Post by peter303 »

swayvil wrote: post #21

In Buddhism the term "Mind" refers to "Awareness" (aka attention, sati) What you direct when you pay attention. What you concentrate when you concentrate. What gets jerked around when you are distracted. (As opposed to "Mind", synonymous with "intellect", which is not what they mean. Call it a bad translation)

They have dozens of terms for states of mind and brain activity. Many are more precise than in western science.

Re: Buddha and Mind

#59

Post by carrolldunham »

Trasmatta wrote: post #55
carrolldunham wrote: post #50

Check out the miserable fate of "Culadasa" (author of the Mind Illuminated) if you want to see what kind of Midas touch situation can come of meditation without the companion practise of virtue, particularly restraint. e: (Midas because the guy claimed to be so "enlightened" and "living in the moment" that he lost the ability to worry about say, other people's feelings, right and wrong, causing harm etc. Acted then i…

My take is that "enlightenment" is a real state the brain can be in, and it can be invoked by meditation, or even spontaneously in some cases. But that this state may not actually have the level of impact on human behavior as many think it should. In the west we seem to correlate "enlightenment" with some level of "perfection", but I think that's actually pretty far removed from what many eastern traditions consider…

The behavioural expectations are explicit in all the Buddhist traditions. You're also mixing up a temporary state with what's supposed to be an irreversible permanent change of nature. Of course, the notion that the rigors of virtue are just part of 'social conditioning' that a meditator will slough off is deliciously tempting to people want to have their cake and eat it too. "Freedom from desire but oh, should one happen to come up - hey why not act on it - not because I want to, just, randomly? haha. because nothing has essence right? no harm done haha."

Re: Buddha and Mind

#60

Post by Barrin92 »

chillwaves wrote: post #56
Barrin92 wrote: post #48

Think the article is right in its diagnosis of mindfulness. Jack Dorsey going on a meditation retreat so he can go back and be even more productive at building the things that send everyone to meditation retreats has always been kind of funny to me. The trend to turn spiritual practices into some sort of self-help healthcare to me is honestly just abysmal. In many ways it is worse than just not doing them at all. C.S…

Why can't just take the cultural lessons of the past for what they are and not believe them literally or completely dismiss them?

because they're not just lessons from the past, they're sacred ways of life. They're serious commitments, not something to be scavenged according to your own interests.

Exemplified by the fact that someone who uses Buddhism as some sort of glorified productivity tool hasn't learned anything from Buddhism but does exactly what Buddhism tries to eliminate, namely desire and the self.

The entire mechanistic thinking of treating culture like some kind of junkyard that can be scrapped for parts is itself a product of a sort of spiritually dead worldview.

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