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Ten years of trying to meditate

ammarmian.substack.com

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Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#141

Post by taeric »

bowsamic wrote: post #140
taeric wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inherently a skeptical person. There are far too many arguments and lines of reasoning that make sense, but are wrong. :D To that end, I will often try and argue against things that make sense to me. And don't take my claim too strong, here. I obviously don't /know/. I have some strong doubts, sure; but doubts are not themselves evidence against. Your very point on weights not absolutely working is essentially my…

Your scepticism seems to have gone beyond scepticism and into some blind religiousity

I get the same statement from preachers and highly devout individuals. So... I'm not sure how to respond?

There is also the fact that this is a forum for discussing/debating ideas. Not just to affirm them with agreement, but to strengthen them through criticism.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#142

Post by borroka »

arunix wrote: post #134
borroka wrote: post #131

I have practiced Autogenic Training for years on and off; for the past two years I have been practicing it regularly. I have observed very positive effects on my life, particularly a growing sense of confidence and enjoyment in and for life. When physical and emotional tensions are let go, old memories come back vividly in my mind, new hopes emerge, and my life seems to be made up of fragments that, on the whole, see…

What is the recommended way to learn this?

There is little material in English, while much more is available in German, Italian, and Spanish.

In English, I recommend "Autogenic Training. A Mind-Body Approach to the Treatment of Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Syndrome," by Micah R. Sadigh, Roberto Patarca Montero (Part II and Part III).

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#143

Post by frostwarrior »

bowsamic wrote: post #114
frostwarrior wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are the kind of things that make me stay away from deeper forms of meditation and mindfulness. Also, I'm not very fond of taking the traditional advice so literally. These sources focus solely on training new Buddhist monks, and most people doing secular practice just want some peace of mind while they continue their, productivity focused, western lifestyle. We need to take these sources with a grain of salt an…

There aren’t Buddhist meditation practises that have no risk of causing this. Any meditation practise that involves mindfulness and concentration done for more than 15 or 20 mins a day carries this risk I agree that the goals of Buddhism contradict the goals we have in western society though. That said, Steve Jobs was a devout Zen Buddhist, so he sat many thousands of hours of zazen I do find it funny though when com…

> Any meditation practise that involves mindfulness and concentration done for more than 15 or 20 mins a day carries this risk.

Looks like mindfulness to 15 or 20 minutes a day is a sensible choice then.

> Steve Jobs was a devout Zen Buddhist, so he sat many thousands of hours of zazen

Steve Jobs was a powerful and a very influential man. He didn't have a boss urging him to be productive 24/7 like a field employee has. Investors expected his company to deliver working products. And it delivered all of that.

> I do find it funny though when companies train their employees in mindfulness. It’s almost like they want workers who have less emotional connection with their work. As I said elsewhere, it’s all a matter of whether you follow the instructions. If you do, it will have adverse effects.

IMHO they want their employees to become stoic productivity machines that make no demands and cope with whatever shitty working condition they set up.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#144

Post by lpcrealmadrid »

abeppu wrote: post #137
lpcrealmadrid wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. Yes exactly! Intellectually that is 100% correct. In practice, as many others in the discussion have remarked, sustaining a meditation practice past the initial barriers is hard (as is learning programming, btw). Everyone brings their own baggage. Mine was that I thought I should be able to do it all on my own. :shrugs: Not surprisingly, I had the same experience with computer science before finding a te…

> not a fan of the snark but the content is great In all seriousness, I think my snark was in reaction to my impression that the content was really lacking. It feels like the intent was more to bulk out content and cultivate an audience than actually help or usefully inform your readers. You described a very common problem at some length, and some things which _didn't_ resolve your search, and then without reaching a…

I understand the cynicism about Substack thoughtbois. I send my emails to a very small group of people I’ve met in real life, and we chat and discuss many of these topics in person.

Question away! If I don’t stick the landing on the follow-up email (which I’m still working on - original email got too long hence the truncation), you can say that you were right ;)

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#145

Post by dang »

bowsamic wrote: post #135
Hasu wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't reply to your other comment, so I'll do it here, and this will likely be my last comment in this thread, because I don't think you're being a very good discussion partner. I explicitly noted that there are probably rare cases where meditation leads to negative experiences (and I am not distinguishing between traditional methods and so-called secular methods, the risk should be the same for both, according to…

> Normal, healthy people simply do not develop psychosis from meditation practice. Again, this is a huge bold statement, on what basis are you making it? You are the one making outrageous claims, and constructing strawmen. If I am a bad discussion partner, you are a dire one.

Please don't cross into personal attack, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If a discussion is inching towards this sort of conflict, it's time to drop it before it gets there.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#146

Post by dang »

Hasu wrote: post #133
bowsamic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the original claim is that meditation _can_ be dangerous unless you are doing Buddhism right. You are claiming that if meditation had dangers, it would be trivially easy to find data about it, and thus it doesn't. We aren't claiming it's always dangerous, we are claiming that it can be if traditional advice is ignored. You are the one shifting the goalposts. Re-read the thread and reflect

I can't reply to your other comment, so I'll do it here, and this will likely be my last comment in this thread, because I don't think you're being a very good discussion partner. I explicitly noted that there are probably rare cases where meditation leads to negative experiences (and I am not distinguishing between traditional methods and so-called secular methods, the risk should be the same for both, according to…

Please don't cross into personal attack, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If a discussion is inching towards this sort of conflict, it's time to drop it before it gets there.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#147

Post by dang »

bowsamic wrote: post #140
taeric wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm inherently a skeptical person. There are far too many arguments and lines of reasoning that make sense, but are wrong. :D To that end, I will often try and argue against things that make sense to me. And don't take my claim too strong, here. I obviously don't /know/. I have some strong doubts, sure; but doubts are not themselves evidence against. Your very point on weights not absolutely working is essentially my…

Your scepticism seems to have gone beyond scepticism and into some blind religiousity

As I mentioned elsewhere, please do not cross into personal attack. It's not what HN is for, and it destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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