101–110 of 135 posts
Can anyone tell me the difference between mindfulness and just deep breathing?
I've always found the Japanese adoption of Zen to be very interesting historically. As a "technology" or body of techniques, the advantages one can gain from meditation, enhanced awareness, and asceticism are well-documented. Where I would caution practitioners is to be very wary of religious invitations to ego death and loss of control over chakras (Never "open" your chakras - which are a physiological metaphor for…
Research suggests Mindfulness increases empathy and reduces anger and fear. Wouldn’t reframing soldiers or CEOs worldview to be more compassionate galvanize more positive change than trying to convince Sundar Pichai or soldiers that they are bad people?
research does not indicate that [0]. mindfulness meditation isn't real, people only believe it because it comes from the Mysterious East and it's Ancient. [0] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mindfulness-no...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
research does not indicate that [0]. mindfulness meditation isn't real, people only believe it because it comes from the Mysterious East and it's Ancient. [0] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mindfulness-no...
You have a good citation for your first sentence, but not for your second.
It's very much like acupuncture. Fake, but because it's steeped in tradition, people will fall for it. Many Westerners have really uninformed views about East Asian / Asian culture, which is why I believe that's the reason meditation has the sway with people who would never convert to something like Islam.
I comment about this all the time. Not once have I ever gotten a single good reply challenging my claims and providing any good evidence that mindfulness meditation is "real".
bonus: "Specifically, the moderation results showed that a significant increase in compassion only occurred if the intervention teacher was a co-author in the published study"
[0] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/transcendental...
I apologize for the tangent, but: > Google engineers [are] working 60-70 hours a week - very stressful. Is this true? I worked a hard 35 hours a week when I was at Google. Granted, I was a junior engineer, but the fact that I could get away with that and have it not affect my career unduly always makes me surprised to hear descriptions of Google as a sweatshop. Can any Googlers say whether this has changed in the few…
My experience was like yours - 35 hours per week ( plus summer fridays and tons of personal days and vacation days ). The only exception was the one startup I worked at where we did put in a lot of work in the hopes of a huge payoff. But even there, we put in 70+ hours a week or two before a major milestone/deliverable/etc.
I've always found the Japanese adoption of Zen to be very interesting historically. As a "technology" or body of techniques, the advantages one can gain from meditation, enhanced awareness, and asceticism are well-documented. Where I would caution practitioners is to be very wary of religious invitations to ego death and loss of control over chakras (Never "open" your chakras - which are a physiological metaphor for…
Do you have any advice for someone looking to learn more about that? Any good places to start?
Plato's model in the Republic, when read as a manual for elites wishing to control society on every level, is revealing in how people are enslaved through their own lack of discipline.
This clicked, for me, with the physiological metaphor in my previous comment when I realized that self-discipline often follows a path upward from control over sexual desires, to control over hunger, to control over one's emotions (the heart) and on up as you master each lower level.
Conversely, failure to exercise discipline over the upper levels, over time, slides you down into the basest level, like an infant, where you lack control even over your own biological functions. Apply the microcosm of your own self to the macrocosm of society and the same principles are in effect.
I apologize for the tangent, but: > Google engineers [are] working 60-70 hours a week - very stressful. Is this true? I worked a hard 35 hours a week when I was at Google. Granted, I was a junior engineer, but the fact that I could get away with that and have it not affect my career unduly always makes me surprised to hear descriptions of Google as a sweatshop. Can any Googlers say whether this has changed in the few…
Not a Googler, but I'd tend to assume they made the number up. Long hours are part of the mythology around silicon valley companies.
"The problem is that the way they brought these into institutions was very non-confrontational, very non-oppositional, in order to to get a foot in the door. And so they're working with these other elites in these institutions and over time they became co-opted in my opinion. So by not offering a challenge to these corporate interests, the radical revolutionary potential of these practices have been neutered." Someho…
No - Buddhism sees its central ideas to be radical and counter-cultural - particularly that one's actions should come from ethical principles rather than just conforming to a group.
Clinical psychologist who teaches and practices mindfulness here. I often hear the argument that the current applications of mindfulness in corporate or otherwise commercial settings are a perversion of the original teachings. While to some extent it’s true that teachings have been adapted and the adaptations are sometimes (maybe often) problematic, the assertion that mindfulness training doesn’t belong in the boardr…
> I often hear the argument that the current applications of mindfulness in corporate or otherwise commercial settings are a perversion of the original teachings. Buddhism teaches that you should tackle the coarser causes of suffering first. If there is a thorn in your foot, no one is suggesting you should go do a good sit to deal with the pain. First you remove the thorn, then you sit. In my opinion mindfulness at w…
So what if mindfulness delays the overthrow of capitalism. So do exercise, sleep, diet, friends, etc. People telling you not to take care of yourself because your misery is useful to them are not necessarily the ones to follow.
Mindfulness doesn’t make your problems go away or destroy your will to be oppositional when necessary. It simply brings clarity and perspective. This is a genuine threat, however, to political movements looking to project their own explanations onto your general sense of unease.
Clinical psychologist who teaches and practices mindfulness here. I often hear the argument that the current applications of mindfulness in corporate or otherwise commercial settings are a perversion of the original teachings. While to some extent it’s true that teachings have been adapted and the adaptations are sometimes (maybe often) problematic, the assertion that mindfulness training doesn’t belong in the boardr…
The author has been practicing Buddhism for 4 decades.
> the assertion that mindfulness training doesn’t belong in the boardroom seems silly to me
But the author never makes this assertion. His point is that mindfulness training is hypocritical and inauthentic when used in a corporate environment.