When I was 12-13 I used to have trouble falling asleep, since I'd be thinking of anything stressful from the day. I fixed it with a form of meditation - thinking about nothing was impossible, I forced myself to think of fantasies when I'm trying to go to sleep instead of anything real. It has worked well for me for 20 years.
Ten years of trying to meditate
31–40 of 147 posts
Re: Ten years of trying to meditate
#32My biggest advice for anyone is to not ignore the traditional advice. Secular meditation practises based on Buddhist meditation take the practise out of its context in a quick and forceful way. Buddhism has had 2500 years to slowly develop and work out what works and what does not. It is quite dangerous to take it and call the parts that do not immediately appeal to the secular western mind, like devotion, worship, c…
I've been noticing an increasing trend of people saying things like this, and I don't get it. Meditation has many forms and traditions, within and without Buddhism. Which ones are "safe" and which ones aren't? Is using Headspace twice a week enough to be dangerous, or is there some lower bound where meditation practice without Buddhist beliefs switches from harmless to dangerous? And are Hindu or Christian meditation practices dangerous, or just the secular stuff? What precisely is the nature of this danger?
> I personally know two people who went into severe psychosis and depression by trying to practise meditation in a secular context.
Sorry, but I simply can't believe this. I mean I believe you have two friends with mental health issues, but I don't believe that psychosis can be triggered in a normal person by practicing "secular meditation". That's an extreme claim that requires a lot of evidence.
Re: Ten years of trying to meditate
#33My biggest advice for anyone is to not ignore the traditional advice. Secular meditation practises based on Buddhist meditation take the practise out of its context in a quick and forceful way. Buddhism has had 2500 years to slowly develop and work out what works and what does not. It is quite dangerous to take it and call the parts that do not immediately appeal to the secular western mind, like devotion, worship, c…
Absolutely meditation is just one part of 8 part Hindu Yoga system objective of which is to be one with the ultimate reality and live a good life no matter what. Person grown with strong Abrahmic values with find it confusing any strange.
After reading Bhagwad Geeta I realised that yoga/meditation is all about discharging your duties with no expectations. I won't say I am transformed but my life do change for good by a huge margin after realising this.
Re: Ten years of trying to meditate
#34Great piece! I’ve had a rambling zen practice for over 20 years and little of it has been the tranquil, peaceful experience that people imply when they colloquially call something ‘zen’. But totally worth it. And as you rightly pointed out, the act of just noticing can be done in motion as well as at rest. Thx for sharing… Btw, I’m a big fan of Shinzen Young who has a secular/scientific(-ish) approach that combines v…
Thank you for mentioning Shinzen Young, I didn't know about him and just checked his website. It looks like there's some crossover with Sam Harris' "Waking Up" [1], do you happen to know how they compare?
Re: Ten years of trying to meditate
#35I was in a similar rut for a while. I had a sense that meditation could help me deal with various mental health issues, but I couldn't do it: I just spent my sessions being bored and annoyed with myself. I tried picking it up many times but never got momentum.
After a few years of this I finally bit the bullet and went on a 10-day meditation retreat. ~12 hours a day of meditating, no books or talking or exercise. The first days were tough, all that boredom and irritation was still there and I had to sit with it for many, many hours. But I felt like I'd made a big commitment in going there, so I sat it out. The solidarity of a couple dozen other students going through the same thing helped a lot too, even if we weren't supposed to acknowledge each other's existence.
On the third or fourth day a switch kind of flipped in my brain and it was no longer hard to sit perfectly still for an hour.
At that point I guess I had learned the basic skill of meditating, and it's stuck with me. As long as I'm somewhere reasonably quiet and distraction-free I can get back into that state within a few minutes.
Also, as a side note, some of the Buddhist philosophy was also helpful. I originally perceived mental illness as similar to physical disease: people are generally healthy, and sometimes there's something wrong with you that needs to be treated and corrected, usually by a doctor of some kind. In Buddhism the script is flipped: existence is suffering by default, and most people require some kind of deliberate work to come to terms with their own existence. I get that it won't resonate with everyone, but in my case it helped a lot to view what I was going through as a manifestation of ordinary human suffering rather than some special, unusually intractable mental health condition.
EDIT: Also, shit gets intense when you keep ratcheting up your concentration and introspection. Getting past the boredom and being able to sit still for an hour is just a first step.
Re: Ten years of trying to meditate
#36"The book of the golden rules" is what you're looking for.
Re: Ten years of trying to meditate
#37Siddhartha is a fantastic book, it changed how I look at pain, love, and everything in-between. I recommend even if you're like me and don't want to meditate to read Siddhartha, it helped me step out of my own headspace into a way of thinking that actively tries to step further and further out from myself.
Just wanted to add that Hermann Hesse is a wonderful writer, and that I thoroughly enjoyed his other works as well (except, for some reason, The Glass Bead Game).
Re: Ten years of trying to meditate
#38My biggest advice for anyone is to not ignore the traditional advice. Secular meditation practises based on Buddhist meditation take the practise out of its context in a quick and forceful way. Buddhism has had 2500 years to slowly develop and work out what works and what does not. It is quite dangerous to take it and call the parts that do not immediately appeal to the secular western mind, like devotion, worship, c…
I'm going to call bs on your claim that you "personally know two people who went into severe psychosis and depression". Since we're in "my personal experience"-land, I've been meditating and have been around people who meditate daily for 26 years. Never seen or heard about anything close to what you describe.
This was specifically a group who practise based on Daniel Ingrams book MTCB, which is largely imo based on generating intense insight experiences as quickly as possible. Perhaps you did not have experience with such people
Re: Ten years of trying to meditate
#39My biggest advice for anyone is to not ignore the traditional advice. Secular meditation practises based on Buddhist meditation take the practise out of its context in a quick and forceful way. Buddhism has had 2500 years to slowly develop and work out what works and what does not. It is quite dangerous to take it and call the parts that do not immediately appeal to the secular western mind, like devotion, worship, c…
I've been noticing an increasing trend of people saying things like this, and I don't get it. Meditation has many forms and traditions, within and without Buddhism. Which ones are "safe" and which ones aren't? Is using Headspace twice a week enough to be dangerous, or is there some lower bound where meditation practice without Buddhist beliefs switches from harmless to dangerous? And are Hindu or Christian meditation…
I would say that meditating for more than 15 minutes a day is very dangerous
I’m sorry that you don’t believe (edit typo) me, nothing I can do about that
Re: Ten years of trying to meditate
#40My biggest advice for anyone is to not ignore the traditional advice. Secular meditation practises based on Buddhist meditation take the practise out of its context in a quick and forceful way. Buddhism has had 2500 years to slowly develop and work out what works and what does not. It is quite dangerous to take it and call the parts that do not immediately appeal to the secular western mind, like devotion, worship, c…
I don't know. This still feels heavy in the propaganda realm. Which... to be clear, propaganda works. Turns out, telling people directly how and what to feel is more effective than makes sense. That is, looking at it as 2500 years of successfully developing what works is hiding a lot of the failure that has accompanied things in that same time span. Is akin to saying that the religions that avoid certain foods are on…
It’s very new to us, why would we assume we have a perfect system for understanding it? It isn’t a toy to play with. Far more scientific research is needed before it’s safe to do in a secular context.