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The new science of meditation

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Re: The new science of meditation

#301

Post by ClassyJacket »

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…

" I couldn’t sit still for a minute when I started "

This is me now. Do you have any advice on what meditation to do?

Re: The new science of meditation

#302

Post by nprateem »

jules22 wrote: post #184
nprateem wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You're supposed to find the evidence for yourself 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 fact…

An impossible position if consciousness is not materialistic, especially since you discount the 3000+ years of cross-cultural claims and documented methods for reaching such states for yourself. It's hard to imagine what else might class as a universal signal there's something to explore here.

Your attitude makes it inherently impossible to prove a non-materialistic position as you refuse to investigate for yourself. Far from strengthening your ability to find the truth you are simply closing your mind to other possibilities.

Re: The new science of meditation

#303

Post by opportune »

haswell wrote: post #208
opportune wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had a similar experience with Taoism. It is a kind of tough nut to crack coming from Western cultures what with our extensive theologies, holy books, and prescriptivist religions. I highly recommend “The Way of Chuang Tzu” by Thomas Merton. Perhaps this betrays some fundamental ignorance on my part, but I think understanding and internalizing the Taoist mindset makes meditation a little less relevant or necessar…

> Meditation and mindfulness help incrementally in that pursuit but they are like climbing rungs of a ladder next to an elevator that Zhuangzi built for us. It’s critical to note that not all paths/forms of meditation involve climbing rungs of a ladder or really any notion of a path whatsoever. The practice of sitting is only for the purpose of training the mind to focus, which helps some people reach the “non-dual”…

That’s very fair, as a kind of meditation-skeptic I probably too aggressively dismissed and mischaracterized it.

The Tao Te Ching itself isn’t prescriptive at all with meditation and the only time it really comes up is in a reference to a breathing exercise, which you could just as well interpret as a one-off for the excerpt rather than formal or ideologically sanctioned meditation. In later early Taoist texts meditation (particularly breathing exercises) was promoted as a way of cultivating various beneficial forces internally, rather than as a linear path to salvation or anything. But then even later they start getting into the Taoism stuff I don’t care for like meditation as a way of becoming immortal lol. Personally I think it’s possible to read the classical texts and come away thinking the Tao doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with, positively or negatively, with meditation.

I think of OG Taoism as a kind of deconstructivist reaction to Chinese culture at the time - highly political, rigidly Confucian - and defining itself more by where it disagreed with the contemporary schools of thought than by what it promoted. While it’s not contradictory to say meditation is compatible with Taoism, any kind of strong rules or expectations about meditation would contradict with early Taoism just on the basis of specifying some kind of rigid understanding of meditation or prescriptive rules about such a complex thing (because that would be very Confucian).

Re: The new science of meditation

#304

Post by brightlancer »

mario-main wrote: post #295
brightlancer wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know virtually nothing about Daoism, but I know a lot about Christian theology and there is not agreement on what Christian belief _is_. It gets even funnier when we compare Christian theology and its interpretations of the Old Testament to Jewish theology and its interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (which Christians made their Old Testament). So, who decides what Daoist belief _is_? And isn't?

>there is not agreement on what Christian belief _is_ this isn't true at all. It's quite simply an Abrahamic religion based around following the teachings of Jesus Christ. There are plenty of different doctrines and interpretations but you can tell what is and isn't a Christian church. Same thing with Daoism. Daoism is both a religion and a philosophy with very specific teachings and traditions. You can argue about h…

> It's quite simply an Abrahamic religion based around following the teachings of Jesus Christ.

First off, that's not true.

Second, your argument is tautological: Daoism is a path based around following the tenets of the Dao; Confucianism is a path based around following the teachings of Confucius; Buddhism is a path based around following the teachings of Buddha.

Even if it were true, it wouldn't mean anything.

> There are plenty of different doctrines and interpretations but you can tell what is and isn't a Christian church.

Are Mormons Christian? Lots of Christians don't think so.

Are Catholics Christian? Lots of Christians don't think so (despite the Roman Catholic Church being the largest Christian church).

You're assuming agreement that does not exist.

> Same thing with Daoism. Daoism is both a religion and a philosophy with very specific teachings and traditions.

Christianity does _not_ have specific teachings and traditions.

Catholicism has very specific teachings and traditions. It's a huge church and they've got tons of groups and committees and panels to write books about what Real Christians™ must believe and how they must behave. And they kick out people who are vocal about disobeying.

But of course, non-Catholic churches have different teachings and traditions. Not that they agree, either. If you wander around the Southern US, you'll find tons of Christian churches that are each just a few dozen people, and their teachings and traditions can be unique.

So if Daoism is like Christianity, then there isn't agreement.

If Daoism has specific teachings and traditions, then how is that maintained? Who decides (or decided) what those teachings and traditions are?

Re: The new science of meditation

#305

Post by mirekrusin »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #282
mirekrusin wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did something similar but always tried to imagine things - shapes like cube, rotate it, move it around, slice it etc. - not easy. I always found it odd you'd want to deprive yourself from excercising mind this way by medidating = practicing not thinking. I believe it helped me a lot when programming and thinking about problems in general.

> odd you'd want to deprive yourself from excercising mind Rest is part of exercise

Sleep is good for rest.

Re: The new science of meditation

#306

Post by mirekrusin »

codr7 wrote: post #203
mirekrusin wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did something similar but always tried to imagine things - shapes like cube, rotate it, move it around, slice it etc. - not easy. I always found it odd you'd want to deprive yourself from excercising mind this way by medidating = practicing not thinking. I believe it helped me a lot when programming and thinking about problems in general.

If that's what 10% of your brain is capable of, imagine what kinds of miracles are possible once you tap into the rest of it.

If you use 1% of your brain imagine what would happen if you’d use all of it.

Re: The new science of meditation

#307

Post by uoaei »

jules22 wrote: post #241
uoaei wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ba…

Ah, the old "you're criticizing me, ergo you believe everything I am criticizing unconditionally" fallacy. What fun...

Disengaging because of the amazing amount of bad faith in your responses.

Re: The new science of meditation

#308

Post by uoaei »

jules22 wrote: post #249
uoaei wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've witnessed quite a few bad trips and the failure mode corresponds well to my mental model of "ego struggles against ego death so hard the person is driven to psychosis".

Broken people on the streets are most often people with prior serious mental issues who were pushed over an edge. Typically by intense trauma (living on the street really fucking sucks for lots of reasons) but also to a lesser extent this can be drug-induced. However the drug class that usually performs this role is amphetamines ("meth psychosis"), not tryptamines or phenathylamines.

But you're clearly not willing to listen, so what use is there actually engaging here?

Re: The new science of meditation

#309

Post by dorchadas »

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…

Personally, if you're interested in the early 'philosophical' side (which I don't think can - or should - be disentangled from the 'religious' side; the separation of religion and philosophy is inherently a post-Enlightenment, Western phenomenon, and doesn't really apply outside that cultural situation), van Norden's chapters on the DDJ and the ZZ in his book I quoted from above are a good start. But there was a 'religious' tint to a lot of this, even very early on.

If you're more open to how the three strands ('religious', 'philosophical' and 'literary') of Daoism have merged and mingled throughout history, I really like Ronnie Littlejohn's Daoism: An Introduction published by I.B. Taurus. It's essentially an introductory textbook, but does a good job at showing how these things have always been interacting (indeed, there's quite possibly Nedian references in the DDJ/ZZ/LZ!) and that trying to separate them really isn't possible (indeed, as said, it's an inherently modern, Western distinction between 'philosophy' and 'religion'), while looking at how they've changed over time.

Re: The new science of meditation

#310

Post by freilanzer »

epiccoleman wrote: post #2

> Given that wealthy countries like the US aren’t exactly riding trend lines toward new peaks of mental health (depression rates in American adults are at an all-time high, while young people appear in the grips of a mental health crisis), scalable ways of not just mindfully soothing, but completely re-creating psychological experiences for the better should set off sirens of general, scientific, and funding intrigue…

> But I can't help but feel the recent societal interest in meditation and psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's treating a symptom rather than a cause.

Yet, if you cannot treat the illness treating the symptom is better than nothing.

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