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Not everyone should meditate

joshcsimmons.com

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Re: Not everyone should meditate

#291

Post by hnfong »

argentinian wrote: post #158
veidr wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just something that happens once you learn to see the thoughts themselves arising, rather than feeling like you are thinking them. This occurs automatically, once you start meditating, typically within just a couple weeks even for those people (like me) who "don't get it" at first. Source: started meditating a few months ago.

If choices and thoughts just happen, then what kind of agency does the self have?

The only thing that matters is whether "you" identify with "it".

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#292

Post by hnfong »

joeberon wrote: post #247
einmaliger wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but this is such an extreme example. You should not overdo anything, be it meditation, gaming, playing, reading, any sport, even drugs. Drugs also give you a state of mind that, when taken to the extreme, can harm your social life and well-being. That is not a problem specifically of meditation. You can safely do anything up to the point that it benefits you. The moment your well-being suffers, or you negl…

20 minutes twice a day for 5 years is not at all extreme

Absolutely, and this is the fallacy with tautological arguments like "You should not overdo anything".

The real question is how much is considered "overdoing", and then the argument falls back to a common-sense fallacy (until it doesn't work)...

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#293

Post by brigandish »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #225
brigandish wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, for that view at least, brain scans and experiments by notable scientists have shown incredible effects when meditators/meditation are put under the spotlight. For example, from[1]: > From studies with thousands of people, Ekman knew that people who do better at recognizing these subtle emotions are more open to new experience, more interested and more curious about things in general. They are also con…

n = 2. If that's the best you've got I'll pass.

You should explain why that's significant.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#294

Post by hnfong »

agent008t wrote: post #242
hartator wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Meditation made a little “high” on life. Careless to the point of physical injuries. Stress via excess is obviously bad but it’s better guide in life than an utopia nirvana. Like if you look at a colony of beavers. Some are building a dam, others are collecting fruits, kids are playing in the river, some beavers are making love, … . And you have Dave. Dave just stay there 5 hours straight in some sort of yog…

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. One of the points about meditation is about being present, fully experiencing the present moment. By fully experiencing every present moment, you fully experience your life. The opposite would be living perpetually in the future or in the past; not living your life, but continuously preparing to start living it some day. In you…

> Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

My understanding is that this actually highlights the "meaninglessness" of enlightenment -- but you don't know what you missed if you never went through that phase.

And, my personal interpretation is that, given that one already went through all that trouble to attain it, it must have some profound meaning by definition. (To the "one must imagine Sisyphus happy" vibe.)

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#295

Post by hnfong »

electriclizard wrote: post #133
kranke155 wrote: post #87

The author might be more correct than he imagines. I suffer from bipolar disorder, which was “activated” during a heavy meditation period 5 years ago or so. My therapist now advises me to stay away from it. She says that meditation is a form of “self hypnosis” and that I should stay away from daily practice, which is what I had previously.

It's been a bit like having access to my computer's terminal for me. I didn't expect the power. I did way more than just turn off the distractions. I fucked some shit up and had to spend some time in the shop. But I also learned how to fix the stuff that was broken and then stay the hell away from the terminal the rest of the time. My issue was mainly that I couldn't turn the UI back on. But also I fucked up all the…

It's fucked up that I kinda understand what you're talking about.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#296

Post by andrewflnr »

razzio wrote: post #45

Meditation is just a word. As an analogy you can say that driving a car can hurt you. Well that depends what kind of car, your driving style, the speed, whether you use the correct side of the road and so on. My personal experience is with 30 years of Anapana and Vipassana that started under guidance in a Thai monastery. Even with Anapana, which is considered quite low risk in terms of 'side effects', the message was…

> Less clinging to ideas of good, bad...

> What starts to matter more and more is compassion for the situation of others and their suffering.

I can't understand this at all. What is good/bad if not defined by compassion for others?

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#297

Post by zozbot234 »

hnfong wrote: post #294
agent008t wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. One of the points about meditation is about being present, fully experiencing the present moment. By fully experiencing every present moment, you fully experience your life. The opposite would be living perpetually in the future or in the past; not living your life, but continuously preparing to start living it some day. In you…

> Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. My understanding is that this actually highlights the "meaninglessness" of enlightenment -- but you don't know what you missed if you never went through that phase. And, my personal interpretation is that, given that one already went through all that trouble to attain it, it must have some profound meaning by definition. (To…

> And, my personal interpretation is that, given that one already went through all that trouble to attain it, it must have some profound meaning by definition.

Wouldn't this depend on what "profound" means? The "lean" model of enlightenment favored by Daniel Ingram and other modern practitioners is that it's really about progressively dispensing with the psychological "need" or "craving" for some sort of personal identity (in the philosophical sense). It's one thing to reveal that personal identity is an illusion (that's comparatively easy in many ways), another thing entirely to restructure your underlying thinking process so as to fully engage with the world without needing to constantly refer back to that basic worldview. There's plenty of room for disagreement as to whether that's 'profound' enough!

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#298

Post by hnfong »

deepsquirrelnet wrote: post #186
joshcsimmons wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m glad you found a combo that works for you. I don’t know many Christians that demonize meditation, but I’m sure they’re out there.

At my Christian high school in the 90s, one of my teachers told the class that the purpose of meditation was to empty the mind to let the devil in. I think this is more typical of fundamentalist types.

That is not without basis. Many cultures with meditation traditions caution against unsupervised meditation. Interestingly enough the Christian bible describes the devil trying to tempt Jesus during his 40 day meditation retreat (which is what people would call it these days). Coincidence? Maybe.

Definitely not saying meditation is a way to connect with the devil. Just saying that it's not as much baloney as you might have thought.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#299

Post by cromd »

argentinian wrote: post #272
cromd wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that's what I mean. And movie maybe implies too much action/drama/plot... Maybe it's more like a surveillance camera! I'd say it's just a general dampening of predictions, emotions, and explanations. Instead of saying "I want my next job to be X", it's "I wonder what my next job will be". Instead of saying "I'm taking a walk to place Y", it's "I wonder where I'm walking to". Of course I can tell myself a destina…

What do you think about the idea of meditation being about temporarily stop reacting to the movie? As if the watcher is often very involved with what happens in the movie, but during meditation he lets go of the the involvement?

That seems pretty valid. Not to make it overly analytical, but perhaps it's like meditation is a lab/training environment where you can press pause on the movie, look around in a 360 degree view, rewind a tad, press play again. But there's no urgent situation forcing you to be "very involved" as you say, and any goal-oriented processes can be paused. Kind of a mini-sabbatical - you know nobody is getting "paid" for the next 20 minutes, so it's not a big deal what happens.

Re: Not everyone should meditate

#300

Post by nerdponx »

littlethrowaway wrote: post #110

No, they certainly shouldn't... for various reasons I did a vipassana 10 day silent retreat back in 2010, and, ended up triggering a bipolar episode[0]. No, there was no history of that in my family, it was a complete surprise. This obviously doesn't happen to everyone doing it, but, while my blog is very much buried now, I still get yearly mails from people saying that the same thing happened to them.. [0]. http://l…

A 10-day silent retreat is really intense though.

A few minutes a day of calming your mind and being still in your body is a lot different.

I suspect the author's 20 minutes a day of meditation was a bit more intense than just that. They describe voraciously reading Zen literature and also describe strong personal Christian beliefs.

And why would you keep meditating intensely every day after you've started experiencing these symptoms? Wouldn't you want to back off a little at that point?

It seems like people "abuse" meditation the same way people abuse hallucinogenic drugs, losing all sense of moderation and going too far with the psychonaut exploration stuff.

Maybe also some people are unusually susceptible to these negative effects, and/or are unusually susceptible to being swept up in the spiritual quest fervor. I think this is the author's thesis, and fine, point taken. Those people in particular need to stay away from intense practice and should probably seek out a guide. But I think the majority of people don't have this problem.

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