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The new science of meditation

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Re: The new science of meditation

#321

Post by safety1st »

brightlancer wrote: post #294
safety1st wrote: post #280

I thought this was the most significant excerpt in the article. > Now, as the research matures into controlled studies and meta-analyses, meditation is losing a bit of its luster. It’s beginning to look more like just another decently effective medical intervention. A 2021 systematic review of 44 meta-analyses found that mindfulness was mostly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants in terms of tr…

"A 2021 systematic review of 44 meta-analyses found that mindfulness was mostly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants in terms of treatment effects" That's not bad company. Compared to the cost and time required for CBT, and the frequent side effects of anti-depressants, teaching folks "mindfulness" to get the same benefit sounds wonderful!

Yes, I was also surprised at how the article underplayed this. "Tons of evidence that it's ONLY as good as the best therapy and drugs"

Re: The new science of meditation

#322

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

everydayDonut wrote: post #142

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…

just a few thoughts. it is possible that your discovery of mindfulness and meditation was essential to understand this tao of pooh and make it work for you.

i also notice that there are people who seem to be blessed with a natural ability to be mindful. those people also tend to be charismatic, happy most of the time, full of intrinsic motivation and energy. all those things i'm not ... lol. my understand is that those people experienced no or only mild childhood trauma and grew up with strong and loving bonds to their parents and siblings. this idea is founded on my readings of dr gabor mate. those people do not carry any pain or if they do they have very well developed mental strategies to mange it. if you don't - like me again - then you will always have an inclination to distract yourself from yourself and your emotional experience - the opposite of mindfulness. as a matter of fact this distraction is becoming the default mental strategy to cope with this always present nagging nervousness and irritation. #adhd

Re: The new science of meditation

#323

Post by nprateem »

maleldil wrote: post #316
nprateem wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

How is asking for evidence close-minded? Having 3000+ years of personal accounts is meaningless when compared to hard, physical evidence. Again, personal anecdotes is not evidence. I know there are studies about the efficacy of meditation in certain scenarios, which is why I do it. But that falls short when you start claiming supernatural states of mind. > Your attitude makes it inherently impossible to prove a non-m…

Your requirement for physical evidence is biased and so discounts the possibility that non-physical evidence may be available.

It's like saying "I believe in X. I won't accept any evidence against X. Since Y is against X, Y doesn't exist"

This means you'd never realise X was wrong in the first place.

Re: The new science of meditation

#324

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #240
carabiner wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of how "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" has nothing to do with zen.

"Not very factual on motorcycles, either" : )

would you mind elaborating? it's been for years on my book list. but if it is neither about zen nor about motorcycles on a meaningful level then i can probably remove it.

Re: The new science of meditation

#325

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

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…

i beg to differ. the more i practice and read about meditation the clearer i understand what it is and that it is something very specific definable in a single short sentence: "observing without judging". understand what that actually means takes some practice, though. but each and every school of meditation (every type of yoga, zen, mindfulness, tai chi, ...) boils down to this and only this.

one exception is the western definition of "meditation" which is more like "thinking silently". this is almost the opposite and technically more of a homonym (one word with two different meanings) and not a different interpretation. it's just something totally different which happens to be referred to with the same word.

Re: The new science of meditation

#326

Post by fluoridation »

waterheater wrote: post #235
fluoridation wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A paper from 1976 claims to have detected ESP in its participants. The paper appears to have only been cited twice since, both in 1979, one to explain the 1976 results as experimental bias, and the other to report failure to reproduce. I wouldn't throw out my walkie-talkie just yet. >If a model of physics supports the idea of remote viewing, so be it. Okay. What's that model? Are brains RF transceivers?

According to Google Scholar, the paper has been cited 19 times [1], which isn't groundbreaking but is an order of magnitude larger. Also, I imagine the fringe nature of scientific research into remote viewing keeps researcher numbers and therefore citation counts low. Perhaps a better paper is "The Persistent Phenomena of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective" by Robert G. Jahn, who, at the time of publicatio…

>Yes, brains are RF transceivers. This is why transcranial magnetic stimulation is effective.

First, TMS operates at frequencies of 1-10 Hz, so that's well below RF. Second, an RF transceiver is a device capable of sending and receiving a signal over RF, not just anything that emits RF or that is physically affected by RF. Otherwise a glass of water is an RF receiver, because when I put it in the microwave it heats up.

Re: The new science of meditation

#327

Post by tasuki »

dottjt wrote: post #164

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.

> The goal is mindfulness.

That's just, like, your opinion?

Re: The new science of meditation

#329

Post by p3rls »

coldtea wrote: post #297
spandrew wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fine though. All of these things, including the original sources, are philosophies as product of the time they were written. Ie. It makes sense for them to change as the society around them changes. If one guy reads the Tao of Pooh and it helps him 'be' — that is the point. Laozi would likely agree: don't overthink it.

> If one guy reads the Tao of Pooh and it helps him 'be' — that is the point. Laozi would likely agree: don't overthink it. That's still a Western way to see it. For Laozi that wouldn't "be the point". The point of his teaching was not to help people "be" in any which way, but to be in a particular way, within a certain philosophy of the world and our duties in it.

Laozi would see it as fulfillment of his final mission to the western gates. Let us remember, the old master wasn't even going to leave any writings for you at all until he was kidnapped during his final attempt to emigrate from the orient.

Re: The new science of meditation

#330

Post by andsoitis »

brightlancer wrote: post #304
mario-main wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. > Th…

> > 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.

These are all Christian denominations [0], i.e. distinct religious bodies within Christianity and identified by traits like doctrine. Various Christian denominations have good reason to seperate themselves because each have different doctrine around Trinitarianism, salvation, papal primacy, the nature of Jesus, etc. If you are cynical, you might say they each compete for mindshare and power within the Christian religion.

For instance, the Mormon Church (LDS Church) is a restorationist, nontrinitarian Christian denomination in the branch of Mormonism. [1]

As a non-Christian, it might be easier to look from the outside in and not get distracted by the doctrine and authority differences.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denomination...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_...

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