Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

There seems to be quite a lot of research on this topic, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation

This article: "Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits. A meta-analysis" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15256293 seems to be relevant to your question.

Of course the mere existence of articles does not prove anything. Caution advised :)

Problem is that you might not be aware that your story has spun out of control and is heading down the wrong side of the road.

Meditation is designed to help you see if that is the case...and the fact that stories are just stories and not reality.

I like the article, but I think the practice here is lacking something. I realize that there are many meditation practices, but the writer here mentions Buddhism, and so I'm assuming insight, or vipassana, meditation.

The practice of vipassana is not to focus everything on the sensations that you have, but only to note that they are there, and move on. I sort of say "that's interesting", when I notice a sensation, and then move on in my body scanning or noting--whichever form I happen to be doing.

By concentrating on those emotions, pains, and discomfort, you are giving them more attention than they deserve, and doing yourself a disservice. You are doing the same thing that screws us up in our daily life--hanging on to the countless emotional experiences we have all the time. The writer of this article could use the guidance of an experienced practitioner to help avoid and get out of potholes like this.

Another thing I'd like to mention is the emotional rollercoaster that this person is experiencing. One should look deeper than just the surface emotions that arise, and look to the cause in your body, mind, or whatever is coming at you from the "outside" experience of life. Just as with the discomforts of sitting in meditation, and emotions, you should consider the events in your life in the same manner, since you'll eventually realize that they have little intrinsic meaning, but have an effect on your thoughts and emotions just the same if you allow it.

Accept that the thing happened, and then move on or act as needed, without letting emotion and overthinking clog it up.

Yes, I have some understanding about it so I can explain a little, but it's necessary to learn from an Enlightened being directly to get perfect understanding. The good news is that it is indeed simple, but it's not easy for everyone to accept, no matter their age or educational career.

The principle means that something is determined - like the formula in arithmetic whereby 1 + 1 = 2; as long as the question (and definitions of factors) remains the same then the result will always be exactly the same.

I can state that the fixed principle of the world is that things make results repeatedly through what is inside themselves.

We can find that everything that exists in the world does so through actions, and the structure which we can verify is produced through the process of activities is that of an object which moves through three states (dimensions), changing itself depending on the specific things (causes) in the object.

A clear and simple example is that of fruiting trees. An apple tree only knows how to make apples because that's what's encoded inside itself. Through the process of its life, if it can produce a fruit with seeds, thereby keeping its own origin, it can be reborn again if it's got the right environment.

The golden rule is not so helpful because the problems to necessitate the rule are not present in the rule itself (like commandments). People who don't already have virtue can't awaken their conscience through the golden rule (to get the result - morality) because the very source of the solutions (the problems) are missing. Instead, when people learn and correctly understand the principle they don't need to be told to do good and not to do bad, they naturally start to recognize from what causes good and bad results happen to themselves, so they don't want to do anything that would harm themselves after they confirm.

MBSR is becoming increasingly common in cognitive behavioral therapy as well -- it's interesting (to me) to see how much intersection there is between meditative practice and what cognitive behavioral therapy is discovering. Different paths to the same conclusions.