100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days • Hacker News Board

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#31

Post by orasis » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:14 AM UTC

xtian wrote: post #2

I know almost nothing about meditation or Buddhism, but I would think that holding on to ideas and realizations so you can journal them is not just cheating "a little bit." It's contrary to the whole purpose of the exercise.

Quite to the contrary. Keeping a meditation journal is an invaluable, underutilized tool that allows students and teachers to see patterns that arise during meditation sessions, diagnose progress, and recommend next steps.

If you want to see some people making some seriously fast progress, check out practice logs on these sites:

http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/messa... http://awakenetwork.org/forum/kfd-archive-wetpaint

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#32

Post by erlkonig » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:18 AM UTC

The singing he mentions is strongly reminiscent of Invocations of Gompo, a track from The Pillow Book (a film), which shockingly is trivially found on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5oHTkH6hw

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#33

Post by cognivore » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:25 AM UTC

Uh, what? Why in the heck is this on Hacker News?

Maybe if there was some angle on how this could make you a better developer, but no, I don't see that.

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#34

Post by orasis » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:27 AM UTC

cognivore wrote: post #33

Uh, what? Why in the heck is this on Hacker News? Maybe if there was some angle on how this could make you a better developer, but no, I don't see that.

If you're going to be doing a startup, meditation, sleep, and exercise must be the foundations of your daily routine.

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#35

Post by afro88 » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:34 AM UTC

While I haven't done a meditation retreat or anything, I always thought meditation was about mindfulness and essentially the absence of internal thought/chatter. Where you use a chant or a focal point (candle, breath, nostril sensations, sounds) to clear your mind and just "be". This guy's experience sounds quite different to what I would have expected.

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#36

Post by mmanfrin » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:37 AM UTC

If I click anywhere on that page, the article disappears. Is this happening to anyone else?

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#37

Post by kemiller » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:39 AM UTC

afro88 wrote: post #35

While I haven't done a meditation retreat or anything, I always thought meditation was about mindfulness and essentially the absence of internal thought/chatter. Where you use a chant or a focal point (candle, breath, nostril sensations, sounds) to clear your mind and just "be". This guy's experience sounds quite different to what I would have expected.

The first three days are about that, focusing on nostril sensations, though it takes a lot of practice to truly "clear" your mind. The second part is where the real work comes, which is simply being with whatever comes up. Not suppressing internal dialog but not identifying with it.

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#38

Post by kemiller » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:41 AM UTC

patrickdavey wrote: post #11

I did a vipassana retreat. It triggered a manic-psychotic (bipolar) experience. More at: http://livingvipassana.blogspot.com Now, admittedly I had done very little meditation before hand, but _please_ don't just jump into this course like I did. And no, there was no history of manic depressive behaviour in my family so this came as quite the shock. 10 days of total silence (no reading, no writing, no eye contact, no…

When I did it, there was a guy in my dorm who left halfway through. I learned later that he had taken the retreat as an opportunity to quit smoking. Terrible, terrible idea.

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#39

Post by xtian » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:54 AM UTC

orasis wrote: post #31

xtian wrote: post #2

I know almost nothing about meditation or Buddhism, but I would think that holding on to ideas and realizations so you can journal them is not just cheating "a little bit." It's contrary to the whole purpose of the exercise.

Quite to the contrary. Keeping a meditation journal is an invaluable, underutilized tool that allows students and teachers to see patterns that arise during meditation sessions, diagnose progress, and recommend next steps. If you want to see some people making some seriously fast progress, check out practice logs on these sites: http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/messa... http://awakenetwork.org/f…

His feeling that his thoughts were too precious to let go of might be more important to examine than whatever he wrote down.

Re: 100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days

#40

Post by nether » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 6:06 AM UTC

cognivore wrote: post #33

Uh, what? Why in the heck is this on Hacker News? Maybe if there was some angle on how this could make you a better developer, but no, I don't see that.

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

> Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

There was at least one Googler at my last retreat.