101–110 of 419 posts
What he experienced is actually expected, deeper states of meditation bring out even harder experiences. Meditation is marketed in the west as some sort of a relaxation pill, designed to cure anxiety and other mental ailments. It's actually not. Meditation is a hardcore exercise for the mind and if your mind is not strong enough then deeper states will break you.
Sounds as conveniently unfalsifibale as any more patent pseudoscience.
You need to solve your life issues in first place to do whatever you want.
Stay, doing nor thinking nothing about it? No, the problems is still there.
You don't make it go away with your wasting time doing nothing like a Buddha (Buddha has no life issues to solve).
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Sounds as conveniently unfalsifibale as any more patent pseudoscience.
Uh, how exactly? What's unfalsifiable about self-reflection leading to painful confrontations, or those confrontations being provocative in ways that can manifest differently depending on the person? To name just one superficial aspect of mindfulness. Are you claiming that sports exercises are unfalsifiable? Because the principle is the same, except that we're talking about the mind instead of physical fitness.
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No True Scotsman? Or are you saying that in most cases it's just superficial? I certainly have met Buddhism pratictioners in the West that were deep into the way of life and culture.
> I certainly have met Buddhism pratictioners in the West that were deep into the way of life and culture. They are "big in the way of life and culture" the same way they'd be deep in punk rock or effective altruism. Not as people living in a culture and tradition that is Buddhist - in an environment that nurtered and fosters its practice, and with all that comes from actual living tradition of a religion. It's more…
Your "No True Buddhist" argument is sweeping and fallacious.
> According to Ingram, one must continue to meditate through these awful experiences until reaching a deeper state of awakening. He makes it clear that the consequences of stopping are severe.
Ron Hubbard himself couldn't have stated it any better. He'd be proud.
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> Buddhist buddhism involves demons, hell, and more praying or even chanting than meditating for the general population. You are mentioning Mahayana or later Vajrayana Buddhism. Buddha never asks you to pray, and he did not teach any concepts of hells or demons. Please stop appropriating Buddhism. You have no authority. Just like Christianity practised in the US is not true Christianity, Buddhism practised in East As…
Western Buddhism is based off an aesthetic interpretation of Zen Buddhism. If Buddhism in East Asia is appropriation and people in East Asia have no authority to talk about it, defending western Buddhism, which is based off the customs of a Japanese interpretation (based off a Chinese branch), is a strange turn to take. (hell is mentioned within the context of Theravada as well)
There is nothing well-defined as "Western Buddhism". The western buddhism I studied is based on Theraveda, and not Mahayana or Zen.
> If Buddhism in East Asia is appropriation and people in East Asia have no authority
No, they indeed do not. Western Buddhists or someone who learned from them don't tell these people that they are doing Buddhism wrongly, and should change. So, someone like you shouldn’t tell Westerners that their practice is wrong and baseless and East Asian is version is the one true one.
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Where did Buddha define Buddhism? Even in time of Buddha, there were thousands of Buddhists who were practising Buddhist while remaining in a family. Buddha, once addressing Ananda, told him that there were hundreds of disciples who attained Nirvana while remaining in a family and with a profession. I find this kind of opposition to Western Buddhist practices absolitely repulsive and baseless. Yes, I studied Buddhist…
> Even in time of Buddha, there were thousands of Buddhists who were practising Buddhist while remaining in a family. Which is neither here, nor there. My distinction is not about following Buddhist as "true to the spirit of Buddha" or not. It's not about "studying" or not, either. It's about Buddhist as a historical phenomenon, a tradition, emergent and adopted by specific cultures in specific ways of life, and bein…
I don't agree with this.
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real Buddhism hasn't been tried yet
It has. My distinction is not about doing it well either or going to reach the "real" nirvana or whatever. I'm seeing it in the anthropological sense, as a particular historical artifact. It's truth is in doing it because you were steeped in a Buddhist tradition/environment, as opposed as doing it as consumer lifestyle choice/hobby.
It all flows together, reforming excessively strict early Hinduism, meditation in the forest, take these lessons and judge for yourself how they help, going to China with the Dhamma, going back to China for meditation lessons, bringing the practice of just sitting to the US when so few in Japan meditate, every where you look one sees traditions and insights flowing together in this great common effort to heal the suffering around and within us.
I meditate because life become impossible without it. Always now, always here, the authentic past is another category our mind creates and places into the wholeness. One cannot be an authentic first monk in California, but one can sit still with attention and silence and focus. One can be rude to other Buddhists or respectful to them.
As meditation makes it easier to see what is on its own apart from what I expected, the effects will vary depending on what one isn’t seeing clearly. So caution is warranted. Normally retraumatizing oneself isn’t helpful or skillful, but change will happen whether we fear it or long for it. Just make sure to sleep when tired and eat when hungry and pay attention within and without and it will work out.
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Sounds as conveniently unfalsifibale as any more patent pseudoscience.
Anything as subjective as one's own mindset interpreted by oneself is incompatible with the scientific method in the first place. It's not the right tool for the job because it is impossible to objectively measure the results. That does not make those results any less real.
But I can say for sure that I am able to replicate the experience if I start meditating.