Seems to have the opposite effect on me. Regardless, this shouldn't be on hacker news.
Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
11–20 of 129 posts
Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
#12Your Zen is showing :) I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective. This pleases the knee-jerk part of my brain which often screams "skip the mumbo-jumbo and show me the data!" (and I'm slowly working to tame that part of my brain, because I recognize that an "empirical…
No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society. If you accept that medita…
My understanding is limited, but I thought that enlightenment was a buddhist term used to describe significant subjective perceptual changes which are more likely to occur with enough quality meditation practice. I was under the impression that there are thousands of people alive today, in various traditions like Zen, who claim to have experienced these changes in perception in various guises.
a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works.Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
#13Your Zen is showing :) I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective. This pleases the knee-jerk part of my brain which often screams "skip the mumbo-jumbo and show me the data!" (and I'm slowly working to tame that part of my brain, because I recognize that an "empirical…
No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society. If you accept that medita…
what you say makes sense to me. I too doubt that by some chance Buddhism teachings turned out to be better preserved throughout millenia then any other "very old teachings" whatever it may be - Christianity or something else. Any information has the tendency to be misrepresented.
where can I read more about your point of view?
Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
#14In my experience Meditation directly increases happiness over longer term by decreasing our attachment to body/mind, there by decreasing the unnecessary suffering.
There are different forms of meditation, each with different emphasis. The one mentioned here is a Buddhist (Insight/Vipassana) meditation where one experiences sensations on the body without judgment. The Passage Meditation (http://www.easwaran.org/) for example emphasizes systematic training of attention to turn inward and dwell continuously on a single focus within consciousness, in this case memorized inspirational passages from worlds great mystics. In essence "we become what we meditate on".
To be happy we need to decrease self-will or ego. In my experience meditation alone is not effective in subsiding the self-will. Meditation along with allied disciplines is necessary to slowly chip away self-will, overcome conditioned habits of mind and find our true nature which is peace, joy and love - the very source of happiness.
Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
#15Whoever said meditation will increase happiness is a false statement.
Meditating for 1 year will get you nowhere. Meditation needs to be practiced like clockwork.
Prolong meditation practice will instill stillness of mind. This is where the beauty is. Happiness is a state of mind. So "stillness" is the key and then it is upto you how you flow your stillness. Now, would it be stillness if it flows?
Stillness in every action and no-action.
Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
#16Your Zen is showing :) I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective. This pleases the knee-jerk part of my brain which often screams "skip the mumbo-jumbo and show me the data!" (and I'm slowly working to tame that part of my brain, because I recognize that an "empirical…
No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society. If you accept that medita…
> So a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works.
That's one of the points of meditation, though, is it not? To "perceive things as they actually are in reality"?
Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
#17Your Zen is showing :) I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective. This pleases the knee-jerk part of my brain which often screams "skip the mumbo-jumbo and show me the data!" (and I'm slowly working to tame that part of my brain, because I recognize that an "empirical…
"I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective."
The more you understand both perspectives, the more you realize that the differences between them aren't actually that big. If you listen to enough buddhist geeks talks this becomes apparent pretty quickly.
I'd also recommend reading the journal article Mechanisms of Mindfulness: A Buddhist Psychological Model:
https://springerlink3.metapress.com/content/e85w20n04r3n7502...
It basically takes the buddhist model mindfulness and translates it into an academic model. It's a good example of a case where the only difference between spiritual beliefs and academic ones is the language used to express them.
Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
#18I can understand if this post is provocative to some, but I don't think there is any getting around that.
To meditate is to reprogram ones mind. There are many ways to do this. This guy reprogrammed himself to feel more suffering and pain. Since he is so invested in the idea that meditation must be good, he instead of realizing that he is causing himself harm, he justifies his practice by saying that happiness isn't the goal.
"I realized that meditation was not meant to purge our minds of negative emotions or thought patterns," Meditation is a tool. It doesn't have any purpose.
"I realize that I should not ask myself how happy I am but rather how attached am I to happiness. How much do I judge my self-worth based on how happy or sad I feel?" There is no should.
I want to give everyone here the opposite of his advice. Focus on the positive things, not everything.
Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society. If you accept that medita…
My understanding is limited, but I thought that enlightenment was a buddhist term used to describe significant subjective perceptual changes which are more likely to occur with enough quality meditation practice. I was under the impression that there are thousands of people alive today, in various traditions like Zen, who claim to have experienced these changes in perception in various guises. a truly enlightened bei…
Good question.
Enlightenment, in the context you mentioned, indicates that you abandon one consciousness and get a new one.
However, what happens through meditation is not the same as that and it has a different point than Enlightenment - meditation is an activity for changing your mind, and the result of modern meditation is that your mind gets darker and you can lose yourself. People can see lots of illusions in the darkness of their minds, and within a relatively short period of time through meditation they can make contact with some very strange phenomena.
What is the source of the strange phenomena in their consciousness? It can happen because they contacted an external consciousness. If the practitioner is weak-willed, the wandering consciousness will enter them immediately and can push their own consciousness out of the way and just drive their body. At that moment, they will show a different kind of behavior, oftentimes claiming knowledge of something that they didn't see with their own eyes (what they don't know).
When the other spirit enters them, their own consciousness just becomes dormant and feels less of a burden so people mistake this for nirvana and peace. People don't recognize this about themselves and only try to change their mind through meditation because they don't know the structure of consciousness and how the mind is generated. The fact is that people's consciousness doesn't change very much without Enlightenment, so no matter how much they practice meditation they won't be able to know Buddha's teachings until they open their eyes to how the world works.
There are two things in the core of consciousness - karma, and virtue. If you have more karma it makes your mind darker, and if you have less Karma and more virtue (conscience), it makes your mind brighter. This happens because what you have done gets input into yourself again. Because people have their own karma, they have their own perspectives and perceptive ability, but can't easily find out what result in their life comes from what questions they have because they can't see what causes lie in themselves and what kind of problems they have. That's why we need a good teacher. Buddha noted that common people always see things in the exact opposite way, and it's because they have karma.
On the other hand, an Enlightened one can realize what is in the actuality because he burned out his karma completely and doesn't use his mind to perceive the world. As a result of stopping and removing his karma, he can recover his own consciousness, and if he can keep his life then he comes to attain his Enlightenment through his life activities teaching what he can see. It's through this teaching that Enlightenment is attained, but until now this teaching hasn't been passed down properly.
So the reason why meditation doesn't work to produce Enlightenment is that it's not a way to recover and save oneself - it's a way to abandon oneself and never be reborn. It's the exact opposite of Buddha's teaching!
Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society. If you accept that medita…
> So a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works. That's one of the points of meditation, though, is it not? To "perceive things as they actually are in reality"?
It should be, but there's no concrete teaching of how things in the reality are and how the world works, in current Buddhist scripture, much less any kind of meditation.
The meditation that Buddha taught is vastly different than the modern ones. He let his disciples sit when they had nothing to do. What he guided them to practice is not to do with breath, nor concentration, nor compassion. But much more concretely, he taught to try to pursue and then confirm the reality of what you've heard, and that you should only allow yourself to accept the reality once you've confirmed. Confirmation is essential because people can easily deceive themselves when they misunderstand something.
If there's anyone who opened eyes to reality through meditation, you should ask them concrete questions about things in the reality to verify. They probably have understood the term reality as one experience, state, or object, which is the indication that they are being deceived by someone/something. You'll have to verify case-by-case to be sure.
Reality can be defined as the set of results which are determined to appear from the problems that things in the world have. Because these results are determined in a fixed principle, someone who knows Buddha's teaching can easily recognize an discuss any field of study at length without difficulty, even if they've never studied it before, because they can realize how it works and thus recognize the problems (matters) involved in the field through the person they're talking to.
Hope this helps. Ask any questions if I can clarify something