41–50 of 148 posts
The end goal of mindfulness is to make you realize that you don't exist and that you have no free will, and there is no "you." With enough practice you will get there, and it's interesting to be able to meditate to the point where you briefly experience periods where you don't exist. Overall, while of course it's true that we have no free will and there is no "you", it's a terrible place to leave someone, especially…
Concentration (sustained attention) has many stages. For example, at the lowest stage and in an unpracticed individual, one must fight to keep attention placed on an object. Someone who is well practised will either pass over that stage immediately upon beginning to concentrate or they will not be in that stage for long. As concentration sustains it becomes easier to the point that no will is required for it to remai…
Yeah I feel like equating sati with just attention or concentration like is done in so many of these studies misunderstands the teaching. Tilopa’s advice might help them understand this sort of meditative “concentration” a little more: don’t recall, don’t imagine, don’t think, don’t examine, don’t control, rest. A high level professional athlete is probably doing something along those lines in relation to their sport…
Preconception certainly is a terrible affliction!
The end goal of mindfulness is to make you realize that you don't exist and that you have no free will, and there is no "you." With enough practice you will get there, and it's interesting to be able to meditate to the point where you briefly experience periods where you don't exist. Overall, while of course it's true that we have no free will and there is no "you", it's a terrible place to leave someone, especially…
...* distressing and functionally impairing meditation experiences of 60 Western Buddhist meditators. They documented 59 types of adverse effects in their study, including involuntary convulsions, panic, anxiety, dissociation and perceptual hypersensitivity—a far cry from the mainstream branding of mindfulness meditation as a panacea for all our woes.*
One thing to be mindful of is mindfulness is a fad. It’s not a silver bullet for fixing problems.
True that it’s not a silver bullet.. I don’t really see it as a fad though. It’s been around for thousands of years. It’s probably not going anywhere.
Is there any evidence mindfulness as taught and practiced by, well, those who teach and practice it, is good for anything ? Keep in mind (no pun intended) - if your example is someone who was already successful, and they remain successful, that's not terribly good evidence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This statement can be made of any long-lived practice. (This is not a statement of disagreement, just a comment.)
Well, I think it's pretty easy to see differences between, say, Christianity and Buddhism. Do you know of any Christians who claim to have had some breakthrough in prayer after which they experienced no suffering? I don't. But it's normal for Buddhist meditators to report things like that, or to report that happiness flows to them automatically. Ecstatic experiences are sometimes reported in Christianity, but I and m…
This kind of focus is important when practising, but on stage it should just be there with the sound, not sure whether this would be called mindful or the opposite.
Mindfulness is very subjective as well — I know people who are proud of their own mindfulness and I can't help but notice that there are always aspects within their behaviour or their surroundings that they are totally not getting. You get the feeling they want to be so "in tune with themselves" they don't notice what is going on in the person opposite, or in their general surroundings. Maybe they got mindfulness wrong or maybe I got mindfulness wrong, but for me what I see there is the polar opposite of the flow state I described with music
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, suppose your best friend told you that he did some practice for a while, and gradually got rid of what he estimated to be 99% of the suffering he'd had before. What form do you think evidence of that could take? Brain scans of some kind? They have apparently been done, and they apparently really do look odd. https://www.lionsroar.com/how-meditation-changes-your-brain-...
I don’t doubt that one can do mental things to put one’s mind in an unusual state long term (nor that differences from these unusual states can be observed with a measurement device). What I doubt is that doing so is prudent. When you look at the ambiguously labeled knobs and levers in the locked control panel of your mind, is it really a good idea to pick the lock and mess around with the levers? (Also, why would I…
The end goal of mindfulness is to make you realize that you don't exist and that you have no free will, and there is no "you." With enough practice you will get there, and it's interesting to be able to meditate to the point where you briefly experience periods where you don't exist. Overall, while of course it's true that we have no free will and there is no "you", it's a terrible place to leave someone, especially…
> you don't exist and that you have no free will, and there is no "you." Have you ever considered that all of this might be gobbledygook that obviously doesn't even serve you well?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I think it's pretty easy to see differences between, say, Christianity and Buddhism. Do you know of any Christians who claim to have had some breakthrough in prayer after which they experienced no suffering? I don't. But it's normal for Buddhist meditators to report things like that, or to report that happiness flows to them automatically. Ecstatic experiences are sometimes reported in Christianity, but I and m…
“Enlightened” people have existed in all walks of life, not just Buddhism. In fact one could see Buddhism as annoyingly codifying into a religion that which is natural and obvious. Just like Christianity.