Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 368 posts

Re: Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

#191

Post by zmgsabst »

rubyfan wrote: post #62

Can anyone actually say what “mindfulness” really means? I once met a mindfulness coach who was trying to sell me on his business where he comes onsite and coaches corporate clients on mindfulness. The pitch broke down when he couldn’t articulate to me what the hell was really meant by mindfulness.

“Mindfulness” has a few components:

- self-awareness, ie aware of your thoughts and feelings

- being present in the moment

- emotional regulation

I always use security guards as my example: you need to see what is actually there, not what you expect to be; you need to be aware of your own response, eg not panic or become angry; and you need to both be able to calm yourself and overcome your default not to act, as appropriate.

Re: Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

#192

Post by curuinor »

biztos wrote: post #148
curuinor wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and seneca the stoic had 300 million sestertii total net worth, compared to the ordinary yearly wage of 200 sestertii, give or take! lots of rich religious folks out there in history. when they expropriated the buddhists in the huichang expropriation during the tang, they took tens of millions of acres of arable land and liberated 150,000 temple slaves

> when they expropriated the buddhists in the huichang expropriation during the tang… Do you happen to have any good links for learning more about this? The Wikipedia page[0] is a mess and my Google skills have fallen short. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huichang_Persecution_of_Buddhi...

best to go read reschauer's book, cited in the wiki page

Re: Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

#193

Post by neltnerb »

vmception wrote: post #150
neltnerb wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting a few numbers in your phone is something I did and would recommend to others in whatever city is relevant. These can of course come in handy regardless of whether you practice mindfulness meditation. My point was that the context of a class on loving-kindness was especially jarring. I fully advocate for everyone to take a class on basic first aid and know who to contact in response to a few basic classes of e…

People in the class kind of like this stereotype that @OverheardLA was making fun of the other day? https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ccyfo9RBcSJ/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M...

Sorry, I can't actually find a reasonable way to view that instagram post. Odd, I thought they used to be viewable without an account.

Assuming it's some stereotype about new age self-defined gurus, no, these were perfectly regular and generally friendly people. The situation was extremely odd, which is why I remember it.

Someone else suggested it might be because the state of mind in that situation was wrong for the task at hand. I think it's probably correct, in another context they would have taken immediate action to help but were in an unfamiliar role.

Re: Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

#194

Post by ramraj07 »

marcusverus wrote: post #119
ramraj07 wrote: post #51

Whenever someone talks about mindfulness or stoicism, the name that pops to my head is Tim Ferris. Like a less crappier Joe Rogan with an actual brain maybe? I still listen to some of his podcast episodes because he gets guests who I want to learn about. But oh my god the narcissism! I get it the podcast is about success and how to succeed, but for the love of god try to take your head out of your own ass for a minut…

This seems like a weirdly vitriolic post. It's bursting with negative characterizations, (he's a narcissist, he's up his own ass, and that he's not a good person deep down) and the support you offer for these hateful words is... the fact that he doesn't talk about philanthropy? I mean, it's not that he doesn't engage in philanthropy, because he does[0]. It's that he doesn't talk about philanthropy? Is it possible--an…

I’m happy to take criticism of the tune of “head out anywhere”. Having said that if the best example of his philanthropy you could find is him donating all the money he made from Ukraine back to Ukraine, I hope you see the irony of it. He probably hoped to (and probably did) make more money by proclaiming this in public than actually sending.

Importantly, I didn’t use the word philanthropy because it’s clearly not the only or even a good way of helping people. It doesn’t even have to be strangers heck. The only time he and his guests discuss “not them” is when they could learn or extract something from said others.

Re: Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

#195

Post by notacoward »

I wish the story had given a more precise definition of "mindfulness" because they seem to be talking about a very specific type of meditation and there are many more kinds of mindfulness than that. In fact, I'd say "mindfulness" is the wrong word for an activity that consists largely of emptying the mind. It's great for relieving stress, improving sleep, instilling patience, etc. but if it's used as one's only alternative to maximum multitasking then that seems far less than ideal. There's a lot to be said for learning how to focus the conscious intentional mind on a single thing or idea as well, but nobody seems to teach that.

Re: Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

#196

Post by [deleted] »

jackdawed wrote: post #172
danuker wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've experienced all these interpersonal deficits after meditating seriously 2 hours every day for 2 years straight. Wow! I haven't meditated before. That sounds like a lot of time. Do you still meditate? What does it offer you? Has it offered you what you expected?

I still meditate daily, but more in a maintenance manner, the same way a power lifter goes to the gym out of habit, for health, without the goal of setting new PRs. Most of the time, my mind meditates itself automatically. I am very good at deep work, and concentrating on stuff. It is also easy to deal with stress and emotions in my day to day. My life feels like playing a third person video game with the FOV slider…

[deleted]

Re: Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

#197

Post by StopDarkPattern »

jackdawed wrote: post #82

This is a forefront issue that Buddhism tries to address, both modern pragmatic Buddhism and fundamentalist Buddhism. It's why right speech, right action, and morals is one of the first things they drill into you. Most pragmatic practitioners will refuse to teach you if you indicate that you have some mental problems or moral deficiencies that should be addressed by a professional first, as mindfulness may end up doi…

And yet no one who read the article, or commented the crap, even thought for a moment that humans have already contemplated these slivers.

Re: Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

#198

Post by stevebmark »

zmgsabst wrote: post #189
stevebmark wrote: post #158

The end goal of mindfulness is to make you realize that you don’t exist, you have no free will, and there is no “you.” It can be an unpleasant place to be dropped off in.

We must have different teachers, as I heard it differently: No Self is the path to Intentional Self. The goal isn’t the deconstruction of the self, but rather, that through the deconstruction of the self we can act from a place of intention rather than bias and preconceived notions. And in doing so, no longer engage in the random suffering that was thrust upon us — but the intentional suffering that comes from our ch…

There is no choice. There is no intention. There is no you.

Re: Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

#199

Post by Spooky23 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #129
jackdawed wrote: post #82

This is a forefront issue that Buddhism tries to address, both modern pragmatic Buddhism and fundamentalist Buddhism. It's why right speech, right action, and morals is one of the first things they drill into you. Most pragmatic practitioners will refuse to teach you if you indicate that you have some mental problems or moral deficiencies that should be addressed by a professional first, as mindfulness may end up doi…

It's interesting that Western Christianity has pretty much the same underlying message - you simply can't reach salvation and union with God without starting from right morals. (This might be why Stoicism with its meditative and contemplative traditions, and a similar focus on divinely-inspired "right/moral action" was a key ally of early Christianity.) Islam of course has its own Sufi traditions, the Biblical prophe…

These are universal values that you find across many religions. Religion is a framework to help us find our moral way.

But like anything, institutions are run by humans and sometimes go the wrong way, focused on dogma, enrichment or power.

Re: Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

#200

Post by leetrout »

infogulch wrote: post #6
rjh29 wrote: post #5

10-20 minutes/day was enough to teach me how to be 'mindful' on demand and mitigated a lot of mild ADHD-type problems in my life (impatience, anger, finding queues unbearable, high sensitivity to noise etc.). I spent a few months doing more, and it may not be related, but I became increasingly detached from the outside world, more self-absorbed and less motivated. Spent a lot of time just sitting and being content wi…

A recent Dr K video tries to address this problem. I Meditated, Now I Don't Care Anymore - https://youtu.be/NnTLJtBr1zo

Thank you for this link. I will finish it tomorrow but this seems really great.
Post reply on HN