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My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

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Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#231

Post by data_maan »

kouunji wrote: post #205

This feels like part of a western habit of cherry-picking from other traditions, and, in this case, not understanding the context we're pulling from. We see things like Zen as fun, playful and liberating, but miss the whole part of it that entails "killing the self". It's a practice of systematically disassembling what you thought you were until there is nothing left...and this is a process that is generally done in…

I do not want to intrude - but I am curious at the same time what you mean by "real harm", was it something along the lines of what the original author described? (Or perhaps other people can share their experiences?)

I'm also a bit confused from a logical point of view - if there is such and end goal of Zen, of being "completely disassembled" wouldn't Japanese temples where they do a lot of zazen, at some point need to look like asylums for the terminally psychically ill, once a majority has "disassembled themselves"?

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#232

Post by maxFlow »

cutler wrote: post #114

I can't help thinking that most of these examples of negative side effects are related to intensives rather than meditation/mindfulness itself. There's a world of difference between 20 minutes a day and 10 days in a retreat looking inward. Maybe it's just better for you in short bursts, not long marathons. I once experienced negative effects after joining a Buddhist meditation group while at university. Every time I…

> These days I do 20 minutes a day of mind control which involves nothing more than counting down from 9 to 1 repeatedly.

If it works for you that's great. However, I would say approaching meditation from a "mind control" exercise such as "counting down from 9 to 1 repeatedly" goes counter to its purpose and will hinder its full potential. If you're willing to experiment with other methods, try letting your mind wander and don't let it stick; just experience the ebb and flow. Twenty-minute sessions sound about right for me as well.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#233

Post by yyyk »

analyst74 wrote: post #158
jossclimb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect there will be higher cases of psychosis happening on intense retreats, but as anecdotal as this, I had it happen to me (albeit not as extreme as OP) after meditating for much shorter periods (approx 10 minutes up to an hour). I really did not see it coming. For some context, I don't know of any deep seated trauma that I have and I liked to think of myself as someone robust mentally. I experienced a deep real…

> I experienced a deep realisation that our thoughts manifest from nowhere and not from ourselves (words fail me here) and that the construct of 'me' was completely false and was just a reverberation of my environment. Wait, is this not common knowledge??

It's a common argument, which may or may not be true if it can be properly defined at all.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#234

Post by cracoucax »

zozbot234 wrote: post #177
cracoucax wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daniel Ingram is a deluded fool, and imo being this deluded probably means a sort of mental disorder. His book and system just show how far away from any real form of enlightenment he is. Sadly because he sounds modern & a little scientific people keep taking him seriously. No, the Vipassana nanas are not what he describes. Anyone wondering about him should just forget this stuff, burn this book and go to a retreat w…

Are you basing this purely on reading about supposedly enlightened people getting angry or grumpy? That's a surprisingly common thing, actually. I know that Ingram's claims of arahatship are controversial and quite possibly mistaken (i.e. it's quite possible that there are levels to enlightenment well beyond what he discusses, especially wrt. the grounding of sīla and renouncing one's cravings), but that's not to say…

Basically what he did what read about the "insight knownledges", (which are initially described in the Visuddhimagga, in a very loose way), and interpret them in whatever ways he sees fit, then proceed to see his, and everyone's life through the lens of that. He even diagnose everyone like an MD on his forums. (And incidentally, he /is/ a MD.)

You hear a dog bark and feel afraid ? Do you do meditation ? yes ? Surely you must be in a Bhaya ñana phase, and are on your way to enlightenment. Because bhaya = fear. Did you already experience that a few years ago ? did you go through this and that extremely loosely defined stages ? Then surely you are already a Sotāpanna and are headed to the attainment of once-returner.

Based on this he is an Arahant (because he says he cycled the insight knownledges 4 times).

But being an Arahat basically means being free of ill will, desire of the senses, and of a sense of self-existent self (and other things). It does not mean "just go though those phases, and that's it, that's his own reduction of the path to a few pages in the Visuddhimagga, which i would not even consider canonical personally.

> Are you basing this purely on reading about supposedly enlightened people getting angry or grumpy? That's a surprisingly common thing, actually.

People believing they are enlightened are common in some circles, yes, and it's always a red flag imo.

Yes, an Arhat does not get angry, that's in the very definition of the term: ill will has been totally eliminated. You cannot say you are an Arahat but you get angry, it would just mean you are something else than an Arhat, by definition.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#235

Post by zozbot234 »

janeerie wrote: post #208
jossclimb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect there will be higher cases of psychosis happening on intense retreats, but as anecdotal as this, I had it happen to me (albeit not as extreme as OP) after meditating for much shorter periods (approx 10 minutes up to an hour). I really did not see it coming. For some context, I don't know of any deep seated trauma that I have and I liked to think of myself as someone robust mentally. I experienced a deep real…

A couple of years ago, I started a light meditation practice (10-20 minutes) and did it for about a month with good results. At that point, I read this article (on Hacker News) and spent the next two years terrified this would happen to me. I had struggled with panic disorder in the past, but CBT pretty much fixed it for me. This article triggered my first panic attacks in years and led to a constant sense of dread a…

> This article triggered my first panic attacks in years and led to a constant sense of dread and anxiety.

Perhaps you should think of your dread and anxiety as a symptom of craving. But if you think your family obligations get in the way, there's nothing wrong with avoiding deep insight practices for now. You can do light meditation and even take an intellectual interest in the deeper teachings without seriously triggering anything.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#236

Post by 2devnull »

sixo wrote: post #219
2devnull wrote: post #207

I’m inclined to think this stuff is more correlation than causation. Meditating is a weird thing to do. Outside of eastern religious practice at least. You get some some semi-normal people who do it, ray dalio comes to mind, but mostly it attracts people who aren’t mentally well to begin with. It’s exactly the group of people you’d expect to have these kinds of problems. The same group that should avoid weed and shro…

That meditation reliably causes these crisis events (so much that it's an acknowledged "stage" of the process; the "dark night of the soul" term comes from the Roman Catholic contemplative tradition which maybe doesn't refer to the same thing but has a similar role in the process) is pretty much THE criteria to establish causation; that it only happens to a portion of meditators additionally rules out "the kind of pe…

My intent was to single out a-spiritual meditation. Meditation that occurs as part of an established program of spiritual practice, that goes along with other aspects of religion within a centuries old framework is obviously the opposite of weird. It is normal.

Whether what you call crisis events that are part of the process is == psychotic episodes seems dubious to me. The psychosis I hear reported from more extreme “aspiritual” meditators doesn’t sound productive but disabling and in many cases permanently so. In the context of established religion, such things are “selected against” in the Darwinian sense. Anything that’s part of the process within the context of a long running time tested religious framework, be it Buddhism, Catholicism, Hasidism etc… must be evolutionarily advantageous (in a institutional not biological sense).

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#237

Post by dsubburam »

jossclimb wrote: post #127
cutler wrote: post #114

I can't help thinking that most of these examples of negative side effects are related to intensives rather than meditation/mindfulness itself. There's a world of difference between 20 minutes a day and 10 days in a retreat looking inward. Maybe it's just better for you in short bursts, not long marathons. I once experienced negative effects after joining a Buddhist meditation group while at university. Every time I…

I expect there will be higher cases of psychosis happening on intense retreats, but as anecdotal as this, I had it happen to me (albeit not as extreme as OP) after meditating for much shorter periods (approx 10 minutes up to an hour). I really did not see it coming. For some context, I don't know of any deep seated trauma that I have and I liked to think of myself as someone robust mentally. I experienced a deep real…

> I experienced a deep realisation that our thoughts manifest from nowhere and not from ourselves (words fail me here) and that the construct of 'me' was completely false and was just a reverberation of my environment. I understood there was no me.

A way to frame such an experience (a version of which I've had too) is to say that we realize that the purpose we've been having for our striving is bogus. e.g. There's no special "me" that's important to make look good, that needs respect and fame etc.

But that doesn't mean we lose all striving. We just find a new, more wholesome, purpose for it.

I think Eckhart Tolle talks about this. There are other perspectives, too, that one can garner by reading philosophy. (e.g. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which puts virtue as most worth striving for; there're also much simpler takes on what's worth striving for in an ego-less sense, which are paradoxically harder to intellectually grok while being much more commonly espoused in practice, such as love for home, and family).

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#239

Post by 2devnull »

louison11 wrote: post #218
2devnull wrote: post #207

I’m inclined to think this stuff is more correlation than causation. Meditating is a weird thing to do. Outside of eastern religious practice at least. You get some some semi-normal people who do it, ray dalio comes to mind, but mostly it attracts people who aren’t mentally well to begin with. It’s exactly the group of people you’d expect to have these kinds of problems. The same group that should avoid weed and shro…

Nobody is mentally well to begin with. Suffering is universal. You simply get people who are ready to deal with their suffering and seek help through appropriate practices, and people who are in denial and convince themselves they're fine. There are a lot of very wise, sane, stable people who meditate a lot more than 30 minutes a day.

There is a spectrum, on one end well adapted, psychologically advantaged individuals, and at the other end people who are more prone to suffering or various difficulties. I cited ray dalio as one of many examples of same, wise stable people. That there is a bell curve is obviously the case. Most people do not meditate daily. Of those that do, the tendency to have psychological issues is greater than in the set of individuals that do not.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown (2021)

#240

Post by wirrbel »

denton-scratch wrote: post #220
wirrbel wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realisation of no self (anatta) would be canonically fit into vipssana meditation whereas mindfulness (sati) is something done for concentration practice

I did a lot of mindfulness sitting practice. We were specifically directed not to attempt concentration. There's more than one kind of mindfulness, and more than one kind of vipassana. I was mainly taught vipassana as something that arises naturally from shamatha; but I've been on courses where it was taught as a systematic exploration of the skhandas, to convince yourself that there is no self in the five skhandas.…

> There's more than one kind of mindfulness, and more than one kind of vipassana

Definitely true, by itself sati/smrti is a hard-to-translate term.

> Shamatha is "calm abiding", which I think is what the McMindfulness crowd are trying to teach. It should really be treated as a sort of universal preliminary for most other types of meditation. But it's perfectly reasonable to treat shamatha as your main practice (as I did).

I am mostly focussing on some breathing mindfulness meditation and some metta, not much, but enough that I feel a calming effect, and I overall am trying to foster some 'buddhist values' in my life.

> I was told that chöd is a specifically Tibetan practice; I don't know what it would be called in Sanskrit. It's a visualisation practice, in which you imagine chopping up your body and your senses, and make an offering of them. I've never tried it; I was told it's scary. I was also told it's sutrayana, although the visualisation makes it sound vajrayana. I guess chöd is a kind of vipassana?

I heard of meditating on your 'own decaying body' definitely from a theravada context, but was overall warned that meditation objects from the imagination are more risky overall for psychological emergencies.

> sutrayana

That sounds like Bhante Vimalaramsi?

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