181–190 of 396 posts
I think a key point that a lot of people miss is that meditation is just a single practice. The goal is mindfulness. This is to say that you can meditate mindlessly, as you can meditate mindfully. You can also be mindful without meditation, although it's a lot more difficult to do so.
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I believe since Maharshi was a practitioner of hinduism for him "the self" (what they call Atman) was to be seen in all things, and the same everywhere. So anything transient cannot be the self, hence is an illusion, or false. But yes i also believe it's quite wrong ^^
He practiced Advaita vedanta. When exploring the non-duality of self vs world, there are fundamentally 2 approaches. Advaita Vedanta denies the existence of the world, only the (true) self is real. Buddhism denies the existence of the self.
Buddhism can deny self, but Buddha can also say, his self alone exists.
In any case, these are just beliefs. We know the world exists and there are no souls around. So much for "enlightenment".
I’ve been meditating casually for almost 10 years, I couldn’t sit still for a minute when I started and can sit regularly for an hour now. I still have a lot of skepticism about the sensations that other meditators describe feeling, like jhanas and profound states of tranquility and whatnot. I have experienced deeper calmness and have made some insights about my brain (eg thoughts are like a sensor organ not unlike a…
I recently switched to a Chan method of facing outward and the hallucinations I experienced were extreme. At first, time felt as if it had completely stopped and what felt like days were going by as I sat there, the floor itself became liquid and water droplets were hitting it and I had a number of other pretty intense optical illusions. I was sitting perfectly still and my gaze was also almost still. I meditated for an hour and once it was over it suddenly felt like the entire experience didn't even happen and only a few minutes went by. But I felt amazing after I was finished.
Makyo is a common experience, but it was one monks had said to not be concerned with as it's just a hallucination. My experience going through that was ultimately unpleasant and not like the states you mentioned but it was immaterial to meditation itself.
I think that part of the purpose of meditation is to recognize a few things, such as your thoughts about the past and thoughts about the future are just like imagination (and a source of strife for people who are caught up in that imaginary world) and your thoughts are things you've consumed, much like your body was once food. So when one meditates you watch these thoughts arise and go by, you feel all sorts of sensations in the body come and go. I don't think the purpose, at least as I understand it, is to experience pleasure or find happiness. I guess if that happens it happens but it doesn't mean anything and is not something you should identify with.
I'm no monk so I'm not qualified to teach anything but I think ultimately part of the goal of meditation is to recognize some basic truths about who you are and about the nature of your existence through a careful and very simple method (just sitting), and that's all there is to it.
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If you're a materialist, which sounds likely to be true given the available evidence, any claims to the supernatural are disqualified by, for example, the Sagan standard.
You're supposed to find the evidence for yourself. But if you never start, you never will. A closed mind is certain to lead to failure in meditation if it means you never try without expectation.
This is the argument of quacks and charlatans (including the meditation charlatans aka "gurus").
A quack will always argue to ignore criticisms of his snake oil and just try it for yourself and find out.
Evidence is not personal, it's universal.
Denying universal facts and saying this is true for me is a position of a closed mind. You are being invited to prove facts, not just assert personal truths. It can't be more open minded than that.
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Psychotherapy works on the "self": your problems, your history. One of the aims of mediation is to gradually understand that this self is really an illusion, hence there are in fact no problems and no history. Past does not really define who you are, and problems are only problems if you think reality should be different that what it currently is the moment you experience it (which is of course totally impossible. Wh…
Similarities and differences in perspective: "...you were taught in [Jesus]... to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." -- Ephesians 4:20-24 "[O]ur mind is trained to function this way in response to som…
To me, the "new self vs old self" framing is just more abstract. You should do what works for you, but I think breaking down one's identity into a set of habits or responses is simply a higher resolution of the same.
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> Supernatural claims made by meditators that are obviously not true are what keep me from experimenting with meditation. I don't want to mess up my brain. I value it. A religious friend went on a road trip and hiked deep into the Rocky Mountains. They experienced the awe and wonder of the landscape, and to them, this was God revealing himself to them. Supernatural claims by meditators are interpretations of the expe…
Your account of an awe experience is quite common. Francis Collins had a similar experience. I am not unaware of these accounts. I agree with much of what you said. But I also think it makes people a tad more open to irrationality after such experiences, even the knowledgeable ones. > that is more about each individual’s existing beliefs and the resulting framing of the experience Not disagreeing.
There are good reasons that so many people realize for themselves that non-dual perspectives hold more value than dualistic ones.
I've practiced mindfulness and meditation for many years until I found "The Tao of Pooh", which, if you're not familiar, outlines the basic tenets of taoism. It has completely changed me and made me feel whole for the first time in my life, and I don't have to practice anything to achieve it. Early on in my life I was drawn in by proverbs and other pieces of wisdom, in an attempt to fill in the gaps of what I thought…
Sadly the Tao of Pooh does not outline the basic tenets of Daoism. As van Norden says in the chapter on the Daodejing in his Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy : > The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff ... is a charming work that has attained a wide readership. There is nothing wrong with enjoying it for itself. But it reveals much more about how the Daodejing as been appropriated to illustrate Western Romantici…
I'm still early into reading the James Legge translation, but I've heard that there are many interpretations of the original. Is the tao of pooh not even close to daoism then?
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Not OP, but it happened to me. Started meditation to deal with anxiety and the introspection that came with it, ended up with me on the verge of a complete breakdown. I started off doing Sam Harris and then progressed to doing an hour or more each day. I had some moments of insight and then hit some dark night of the soul which wrecked me, I was close to admitting myself to hospital for psychological help. What fixed…
I feel like you did the wrong sort of meditation for anxiety. Mindfulness and breathing where you see the thought come and let it go is preferred for anxiety sufferers. You should not be following your anxious thoughts. I could see how it would affect you negatively if you tried to follow all your anxious thoughts and delve into their "meaning". The goal for some with high anxiety ought to be lessening its meaning. Y…
Despite significant literature on meditation psychosis, meditation is promoted as a completely safe practice and risks are almost never mentioned to new practitioners.
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Supernatural claims made by meditators that are obviously not true are what keep me from experimenting with meditation. I don't want to mess up my brain. I value it. All the senior meditators I know have some element of irrationality. The openness that meditation seems to promote seems to also promote a certain level of gullibility that I did not expect from them. Obviously, an out of body experience is not really tr…
Irrationality and gullibility are underrated.
The fear many have about attempting such things mirrors the fear of e.g. psychedelic experiences -- the fear of "never coming back". Ironically, only living through this fear is what causes the bad trip in the first place. Egos, man, egos suck.
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For me, it was about confronting deliberate self deception. In my mind I always told myself that "I dont have time to exercise", when the truth was, I was too lazy to exercise. While I was meditating, this profound clarity came to me, it wasn't a case of a tyranny-like self-harming disclipinary action about my deliberate self deception, it was more like a great washing of positive emotion that framed exercise as "thi…
An hour day seems like a high threshold (I'm not saying it is, just my perception). Are there diminishing returns pas 15 minutes or 30 minutes etc?
After that point, it's up to my subconscious. I'll stop when I feel like it, when I feel satisfied. That could be anywhere from 10 more minutes to another hour. But the longest part is always the beginning. The second part never feels like time is passing - it's exactly what I want to be doing.
Of course, if I only have 15 minutes, there's no guarantee I'm going to reach a place of satisfaction. I would aim to set aside 30-45 minutes whenever possible. I often see "do X for 1 hour a day" and that's just not realistic for everyone. You can definitely get good results with less time investment. But in general, yes you'll get out of it what you put in. I don't walk every single day and I noticeably suffer for it.