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Poll: Do you meditate?

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Re: Poll: Do you meditate?

#221

Post by xk_id »

xk_id wrote: post #217
gnosis wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the notion that inanimate objects and even trees have feelings is fundamentally unsound" It may seem unsound from the perspective of ordinary waking consciousness, and certain materialistic[1], physicalist[2], or naturalistic[3] philosophies. But it seems quite sound from the perspective of many non-ordinary states of consciousness, animism[4], panpsychism[5], pantheism[6], panentheism[7], various types of shamanism…

> But it seems quite sound from the perspective of many non-ordinary states of consciousness, animism[4], panpsychism[5], pantheism[6], panentheism[7], various types of shamanism[8] and religions which hold animistic, pantheistic, or panentheistic beliefs. Excellent, doctrines do tend to be self-contained. IF X, THEN Y. In the mean time, I bring up an important fact: we have always depended decisively on how well we…

> Take much care to ensure that you are not merely being open, like a scientist is to new evidence and a better "map" for the "territory"; but rather that you are doubting everything. And as someone once eloquently put it, there are two ways to glide easily through life:

should read:

Take much care to ensure that you are not doubting everything, instead of being merely open, like a scientist is to new evidence and a better "map" for the "territory". As someone once eloquently put it, there are two ways to glide easily through life:

Re: Poll: Do you meditate?

#222

Post by hosh »

richardjdare wrote: post #211
hosh wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to presuppose that they exist. You can simply observe their comings and goings. It will take a lot longer but it is still possible. You become the observational instrument to see if those characteristics do, in fact, exist. The critical tools of modern philosophy has been disconnected from direct experiences for this, so it's not as useful as you think it is. At least, not until you have direct realiza…

Thanks for your reply. Going on a vipassana retreat and participating in a shamanic ceremony are definitely things I'd like to do at some point. All of my investigations have been solitary, for the most part, so I am ignorant of the collective side of things. (as a nerd, I am generally ignorant of the collective aspects of life anyway!) I think if meditators were to study continental philosophy in particular, they wo…

Oh yeah! Though my knowledge of Western philosophy is shallow, I know there are not only parallels, there are outright convergences. The key is in the experience.

I see this in all the wisdom traditions, so that includes a reading of Jewish, Christian, and Islam.

Check out Terrance McKenna some time if you haven't. There is in which he does a trialogue with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abraham. While I don't precisely agree with some of McKenna's comments on religions, his works are excellent sources of questions. :-D

Re: Poll: Do you meditate?

#223

Post by sterlingross »

crusso wrote: post #191
sterlingross wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you described is meditation in its purest sense, as it can take many forms. The true definition of meditation is mindfulness. If you do anything with mindfulness you are meditating. For me I practice sitting meditation, walking meditation, and yoga. Creating art, painting and photography, are also both highly meditative experiences that I enjoy immensely. I've made great effort to meditate while coding, but I ha…

Creating art, painting and photography, are also both highly meditative experiences They're certainly mindful, but I like to distinguish the mindfulness of meditation from the mindfulness of concentration on something specific. When you're concentrating on something like coding or creating art, the thoughts themselves provide the framework of your mindfulness and drive your mind's focus. When I'm meditating, I try to…

Thank you for bringing that up, you are absolutely correct.

It helps if I clarify my approach to painting and photography, as both I do without much mental involvement, and with mindfulness.

My painting is highly abstract and very repetitive, so I am free to meditate through most of the process.

The meditative state of my photography is mostly in relation to being present in the moment, before or after my gear is set up, and I can be quite mindful while pressing the shutter release.

The final result is a distilled meditation on the moment.

I agree that any complex task makes meditation difficult.

Re: Poll: Do you meditate?

#224

Post by tedks »

dwc wrote: post #219
tedks wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematics isn't popular because it originated in India and China; it's popular because it's practically useful in a variety of ways. Why are Christian symbols popular in anime? It's not because they're inherently compelling in any way, it's because they're from a foreign culture and they have exotic appeal. Why do people in the US practice meditation? Is it because they rationally considered all available peer-revi…

I think that's largely true, but doesn't speak to whether meditation is actually worthwhile. And I'd think it's less true for people here. For myself, I never tried it until I started hearing of studies. After that, I found some nice secular material on it. I would have had a lot of trouble wading through much woo, and luckily that wasn't needed.

Things tend to exist because they're popular (QWERTY) or good (DVORAK). While there is certainly "evidence" in some form for meditation, it seems to exist mostly because it's popular.

If meditation is actually good, and it eventually permeates society, I'll just be a late adopter. No account I've ever read has pitched it as so wonderful a tool that being a late adopter would be terribly painful for me.

But for now, I'm predicting that meditation will be a fad. I don't expect to see ~5-10 meditation centers in my hometown in 15 years.

Re: Poll: Do you meditate?

#225

Post by riazrizvi »

blndcat wrote: post #134
riazrizvi wrote: post #131

Though not the obvious way of sitting and chanting, I meditate by just bringing mindfulness to an activity I am doing anyway. A run, a stretch, hanging out with my kids, a conversation, a breath. I summon complete attention, at first it feels weird to notice every little sensation, then I try to adapt the experience until it feels better.

This is exactly what I would like to achieve. Being present. Could you share how you learnt and practiced it? I am trying but failing.

I didn't find a good book, I cobbled this together between a few different books and personal experience. Not sure if it is what you are looking for exactly:

I find the benefit in meditating comes from trying to fix how my conscious mind and unconscious behavior are misaligned. The practice starts with switching attention from inner dialogue and visualizations, and moving it to the physical sensations in the body. So you are reading your code, then you silently search around within for feelings. You feel the pressure of the chair on your butt, the air as it moves over the rim of your nostrils, physical feelings like that. Regarding self-regulation, I might notice a scrunched up forehead that I've held for hours, that is tiring me out and completely unnecessary. So I relax it.

The more I do it, the more perceptive I become.

Re: Poll: Do you meditate?

#226

Post by georgeorwell »

tedks wrote: post #204
gnosis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that part of the attraction of meditation for a lot of Westerners is that it seems "exotic" and "different". However, I would strongly disagree with you that such an attraction to exoticism is a reason for completely disregarding meditation. After all, many things that are common in Western societies (some of which you might actually value quite highly) are considered exotic in non-Western societies, and mi…

Oh, I'm not negative of meditation because it originated in another culture. I'm negative of it because it seems like a mystical practice that's only more popular than Christian prayer in the US because it originated from an "exotic" culture. Christian prayer is certainly popular in the US, even to the point where it could be said to be "highly valued," but I would never try to use prayer to make myself more producti…

I'll give you a practical example. What specific emotions do you feel when you take a moment to consider the following two lists of five words extracted from your comment?

1) mystical, Christian, exotic, prayer, pitched

2) productive, evaluate, tools, objective, applies

Answer the question (privately if you like) and you just "meditated".

Meditation is self-observation, nothing more, nothing less. If you want to learn more about how the specific "tedks" configuration of neurons works, that's what meditation (a.k.a. self-reflection, self-observation) promises, as opposed to science which by definition cannot do this. I'm pretty sure that many of the things you consider valuable already do count as meditation (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5331514 ), it's just that nobody labelled them as such or built a formal discipline around them. That might be part of why meditation seems like such BS to you.

The stuff about sitting there with your eyes closed and focusing on your breathing isn't really necessary (I don't really do this anymore), all that's meant to do is help you slow your brain down so you can look at it, kind of like using a debugger. You can get kind of high from that and while fun it can be a hindrance in all sorts of other ways.

All the spiritual stuff you see is perhaps best described as a metaphor for the kinds of things people experience, since they don't have better words for it. Ultimately there isn't a particular belief system tied to meditation, kind of like there isn't a particular belief system tied to the act of debugging a program (although people do like to get into holy wars).

Finally, there's this joke that says all Buddhists are either meditating or feeling guilty about not meditating. So if someone is telling you that you "should" meditate they are quite possibly projecting some of their own guilt about their own spiritual practice onto you. Of course had they been practicing meditation by being "mindful" in the conversation with you (this is just code for "paying attention to their own thoughts and feelings while not sitting in silence somewhere"), they would see that this is what their feelings were doing and they'd probably choose not to pressure you like that.

Anyway, hope this helps.

Re: Poll: Do you meditate?

#227

Post by georgeorwell »

joelthelion wrote: post #206
tedks wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've pre-emptively excluded meditation from my set of legitimate things, because it pattern-matches to white people taking something non-white people do and finding "deep wisdom" in it. It's the same reason why various fruits and berries that are common and worthless in south africa sell like hotcakes in the US, and the same reason why anime has so much Christian imagery.

Since when is "pattern-matching" a legitimate reasoning technique? It can sure be used to raise a flag, but excluding something completely on this basis is pretty stupid.

Cognition is layer upon layer of pattern processing, all the way down to sensory inputs. His particular pattern matching mechanism might need adjustment, but pattern matching itself is the only mechanism by which we decide anything. If you doubt me, ask yourself, do these sentences pattern match to "correct" or "incorrect"? See?

Re: Poll: Do you meditate?

#228

Post by andrewcooke »

javert wrote: post #213
andrewcooke wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the kind that is fashionable in "western medicine" at the moment is called "mindful meditation". if you google that phrase you can find more info. it's basically practicing not giving a fuck (whatever you are thinking about you try to give up thinking about - you are aiming for a kind of "not caring about anything" state). so if you think that would be a good thing to practice, give it a go. i do it because it was re…

If it's true that all that non-mystical meditation is, is just forcing yourself to not think about ANYTHING, it makes sense that a person would find it to be a way to stop worrying about things, and just sort of relax. BUT, it seems like it would be more effective to simply take corrective action (mental or existential) in order to actually address the thing that you are worried about.

not sure about the general case, but if you have any new way of addressing MS then i am open to suggestions.

Re: Poll: Do you meditate?

#229

Post by javert »

andrewcooke wrote: post #228
javert wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's true that all that non-mystical meditation is, is just forcing yourself to not think about ANYTHING, it makes sense that a person would find it to be a way to stop worrying about things, and just sort of relax. BUT, it seems like it would be more effective to simply take corrective action (mental or existential) in order to actually address the thing that you are worried about.

not sure about the general case, but if you have any new way of addressing MS then i am open to suggestions.

No idea about that, and sorry if my post was a bit insensitive to that issue, I didn't intend that.

Re: Poll: Do you meditate?

#230

Post by pkennedy »

mehulkar wrote: post #207
pkennedy wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, small world, eh? There's at least two others around, but they seem to be heads down building stuff right now.

That's great. Are you in the Bay by any chance? I'd contact you offline, but your profile doesn't have contact info. Would love to meet up.

Florida, actually.

I guess I should update my profile. It's kind of neglected.

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