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The new science of meditation

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Re: The new science of meditation

#241

Post by jules22 »

uoaei wrote: post #195
jules22 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, these "No true Scotsman" justifications only come out later. Despite significant literature on meditation psychosis, meditation is promoted as a completely safe practice and risks are almost never mentioned to new practitioners.

TBH all I'm seeing are straw man arguments from you. It sounds like you have not given any time to a truly good-faith exploration of these methods, instead leaning on vague impressions based on only the most incidental and bottom-of-the-barrel evidence.

> sounds like you have not given any time to a truly good-faith exploration of these methods

To me, this is just a variation of "never mind the science, why don't you try for yourself" argument you find in quackery. I found a disconnect between what people were reporting and actual behavior in meditators.

> only the most incidental and bottom-of-the-barrel evidence.

Are scholarly reports of psychosis bottom of the barrel or are testimonials from meditators the bottom of the barrel? Perhaps next, you want to make an argument from popularity?

You might just be completely unfamiliar with the emerging scholarly literature on the topic.

Lambert, D., N. H. van den Berg, and A. Mendrek. "Adverse effects of meditation: A review of observational, experimental and case studies." Current Psychology (2021): 1-14.

Re: The new science of meditation

#242

Post by cypherpunks01 »

mjthrowaway1 wrote: post #66
choxi wrote: post #57

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…

Question: have you sat for a retreat? The reason I’m asking is I’m curious if it’s a “dosage” issue. I sat for a 10 day goenka retreat and was shocked at how psychedelic the experience was for how little warning I was given.

I had a light psychedelic experience on my first retreat, with very noticeable visual object patterns and cartoons appearing in the heathered shirt of the yogi sitting in front of me, during a couple different periods of holding a stable meditation state. I've never had anything like that happen except on cannabis edibles or classic psychedelics.

I would recommend people sit their first retreat at a more supportive and forgiving retreat center. The 10-day Goenka retreats seem to vary in quality and sometimes unnecessarily harsh from what I've read, I've not sat one personally. I don't like the idea of getting all instructions from video also, instead of all the great living teachers out there today.

I'd recommend IMS on the East Coast, and Spirit Rock on the West Coast. They have really great teachers and very supportive schedule and environment for beginners. Downside is it's more costly than a free retreat, but I found it to be very much worth it.

Re: The new science of meditation

#243

Post by jules22 »

vram22 wrote: post #215
jules22 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Advaita denies only the duality between the soul and the world soul, while denial of the world is more of solipcism. 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".

"solipcism" solipsism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

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Re: The new science of meditation

#244

Post by darthrupert »

kagakuninja wrote: post #144
darthrupert wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One probably needs a bit of religiousity to be able to meditate as much as senior meditators do.

No, many of the meditation practices, such as Jhana and nirodha sammapati do not require any religious beliefs at all. Of course, the skeptic is unlikely to spend the vast amount of time needed to master such skills.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I mean to suggest that one needs faith in order to meditate that much. Faith that it's a worthwhile thing to do.

Re: The new science of meditation

#245

Post by jules22 »

kagakuninja wrote: post #150
jules22 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The human brain is far less rational than we tend to believe. Recent research indicates that we hallucinate our world: we guess what we are likely to see, based on prior experience. If wrong, our brain adjusts and reevaluates the sensory data. In some cases, we even ignore unusual experiences that do not fit into our internal model. Senior meditators spend vast amounts of time examining their personal reality, and le…

> The human brain is far less rational than we tend to believe. Recent research indicates that we hallucinate our world

All the more reason, to not take reason for granted.

> Senior meditators spend vast amounts of time examining their personal reality

They do, and my concern is they contribute no new insights, especially given the vast investments of time.

> Out of body experiences can be had by any person who spends enough time meditating

These are serious hallucinations and I am alarmed by how they are brushed aside. Most meditators think they are astral projecting. This is not examination or insight. This is delusional.

Re: The new science of meditation

#246

Post by Tao3300 »

opportune wrote: post #221
dorchadas wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What would you recommend as an introduction to Daoism, even if academic? I am not an expert on the subject but IMO Taoism has a very similar phenomenon to Buddhism (and indeed all religions or popular philosophies really) in that the “classical”, original, core teachings are pretty different from the organized later movements under the same name. So the context - philosophical, historical, sociological, spiritual - i…

Hoh hoh! Have you not heard that that dao which has a recommended introduction is not the true dao?

Re: The new science of meditation

#247

Post by jules22 »

kallistisoft wrote: post #214
jules22 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life being a hallucination is in fact one of the hallucinations that can be caused by meditation. These are called derealization hallucinations and are reported in meditators.

Your're being to literal without being literal enough! The "reality" that we experience is a predictive model of what we believe is about to happen. This is required because it takes a quite some time[1] for stimulus to be received and processed by our bodies! If we didn't have this predictive mechanism the universe would seem very strange indeed. But but because we hallucinate our reality we get the illusion that wh…

I am literally talking about the literature.

Kuijpers, Harold JH, et al. "Meditation-induced psychosis." Psychopathology 40.6 (2007): 461-464.

Re: The new science of meditation

#248

Post by Tao3300 »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #202
galaxyLogic wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think meditation is similar to physical exercise which you need to do a little bit frequently, to stay healthy. You don't need to do sports but if you stop walking altogether your physical health deteriorates. Your joints get arthritic. So the goal of meditation should not be some Cosmic Epiphany Truth or Satori or Nirvana or Samadhi. Those come and go. The goal is to keep your mind healthy, to get the toxins out o…

You do not need to sit down to mediate. That is the biggest myth. I mediate while going about my day.

> You do not need to sit down to mediate.

I find that if I try to mediate standing up I come across as aggressive.

Re: The new science of meditation

#249

Post by jules22 »

uoaei wrote: post #189
munificent wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irrationality and gullibility are underrated.

I've heard such explorations referred to as 'reality safari' which I love. Immersing yourself in an entirely different philosophy to really feel it from the inside, to understand it completely and intuitively. 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…

> Ironically, only living through this fear is what causes the bad trip in the first place

Where is the evidence for this? None.

> the fear of "never coming back"

Psychedelics sound like fun, but I have seen quite a few broken people on the streets, all because of them. It's not just fear, it is a serious concern.

Re: The new science of meditation

#250

Post by Tao3300 »

ergonaught wrote: post #225

One of the ways I hate wasting my time is wishing we would stop using a word that has been overloaded into uselessness as if it conveyed some kind of actual meaning by itself. The article touches vaguely upon it, but “meditation” covers so many different things, many of which are completely incompatible with each other, it’s a guarantee that discussing “meditation” leads to people thinking they are talking about some…

Or it leads to a massive outbreak of "actually that's not really meditation, this is" discussions.
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