231–240 of 368 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Big if true
If we ask again what is mindfulness technique and what is created for, we will arrive to answer that it is technique from Buddhism, meant to liberate us from world, and repeated cycle or rebirth and suffering. Regardless of what you believe pause there and ponder. Forget for a moment whether you believe in after life or not. If we think about the end goal "liberate from the suffering" liberate from world and minds game.
So, we took a tool which should liberate us from world to become more productive?
Isn't our usage premise wrong? Of course there will be side effects, if you "abandoning" everything that is world game and keeps you worried or money looking animal, why is so strange that there are side effects as selfishness? First stage of going inward is removing everything around you, and by seeing true nature you stop caring. But by stop caring suddenly, you see that as explained in many scriptures 'good or bad do not exist' there is only constant change.
Imagine you are child and you are with other children playing in the court, they ask you to join and you refuse. You say "I do not want to be in the game", and they reply "Why not?! C'mon we need extra player, here, you can be on a good side", you reply "I do not care about game, sides, manipulations, or you, in fact in this moment I do not exist"... from your perspective this is valid, from other children perspective you are selfish.
Also question of quilt is inverted. Who expect guilt we as society, or the individual?
Having lived in Boulder CO for several years, which is basically the Mecca of Americanized mindfulness, I can attest that this is true. The most ardent practitioners that I met were invariably self obsessed.
I spent a week in Denver and boulder and continuously got the eerie vibe that every person I met who moved there, is an example of the most self centered person I would have met in any other situation elsewhere. I suppose the type of young person who’d move to CO “for the outdoors” is gonna select for the trend. Everything, including the assholish cycling, was indicative of that. Noped out of that place for this reas…
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…
That sounds absolutely terrifying to me. [1]
All these articles about the downsides of meditation and the above statement just keep pushing me away from it. I enjoy guided meditation with a licensed therapist, but unguided meditation by myself feels more and more unnatural.
1: Aside: I have enjoyed enhanced senses under strong drugs, but I also enjoy spending most of my life sober with unheightened perception. There is a reason why our brain is filtering out most sensory signals. I would not want 360 view and to fit thousands of sensations during my normal day.
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The 4 hour work week presents an ideology of success by being a shitty person.
Please explain why one would be a shitty person if one tried to start a business that is sustainable on a few hours of work per week.
Not exactly a mark of great compassion or kindness, if that's actually what's presented.
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Such people may have achieved some sort of genuine stream entry at some point, and then slipped back/regressed into very ego-centered patterns of thinking. Regardless, it calls their advice into question. I'm not surprised that some folks are dissuaded - and I'd caution people against doing "just a little bit" anyway, if they're aiming at anything like actual stream entry/enlightenment. Vipassana meditation demands a…
So humans being imperfect, stupid creatures negates anything else this person may have to say? The idea that Buddhist teachers should be some kind of perfect being is utterly false, and to be fair, if you ever thought so or believed someone when they claimed to be such a one; perhaps buddhism wasn’t so suitable for you anyway. The goal is not to become some kind of zen droid. Quite the opposite.
Humans are just naked apes, no need to judge that harshly.
Having sex and drinking alcohol is fine in my mind, since i don't believe in religious morals.
Cognitive dissonance makes it possible to preach one thing and do another. We call it hypocrisy no?
A bit off beam but I always thought it odd that Darth Vader used a meditation chamber to meditate in The Empire Strikes Back. It just seemed so strange that the key villain was practising mindfulness, yet not being very mindful.
It's a pressure chamber. He uses it so he can take off his pressure suit / armor for a bit without dying.
IIRC it wasn't about meditation at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spent a week in Denver and boulder and continuously got the eerie vibe that every person I met who moved there, is an example of the most self centered person I would have met in any other situation elsewhere. I suppose the type of young person who’d move to CO “for the outdoors” is gonna select for the trend. Everything, including the assholish cycling, was indicative of that. Noped out of that place for this reas…
What is assholish cycling?
Why is this a surprise? It's a technique whose central tenet is to turn a person's attention inward, promoting it as therapy. I am sure it helps a subpopulation, but I'm definitely not in it.