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Meditation: Why Bother?

vipassana.com

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Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#41

Post by dieterrams »

tel wrote: post #27

This essay angers me with its presumption. It reads off like a fortune teller reaching for whatever level of generalized sympathy will get you nodding along. Maybe I'm just not sensitive enough to see the boiling resentment and stress in watching families sing Sweet Caroline along with the crowd at the local baseball game, or maybe I'm just far too aware of the postmodern tradition of misery the essayist is targeting…

I'm amazed at how angry this article makes you (and other commenters). I'm even more surprised that you're trying to frame this as a cheap sales pitch, because there isn't any mention of money or their services in the entire article, or even the suggestion that you ought to seek out such a service. You actually have to click through two pages just to find a price for their online course. This doesn't even begin to approach the somewhat sketchy nature of blog posts describing a book with an Amazon referral link at the end, which get FPed here with some frequency.

And where on earth does he attack families singing Sweet Caroline along with the crowd at the local baseball game? Do you actually think he's attacking the whole of baseball fandom?

You guys are definitely reacting to something, but I'm not sure it's this article.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#42

Post by ulvund »

Groxx wrote: post #35

What's with the see-saw of meditation articles lately? It's better than expected, science™ proves it! It's a waste of time, news at eleven! We'll show you how for only some monies!

It has been a year since I saw this posted on HN and it got me started with meditation, so I figured I would repost it :)

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#43

Post by ulvund »

tel wrote: post #27

This essay angers me with its presumption. It reads off like a fortune teller reaching for whatever level of generalized sympathy will get you nodding along. Maybe I'm just not sensitive enough to see the boiling resentment and stress in watching families sing Sweet Caroline along with the crowd at the local baseball game, or maybe I'm just far too aware of the postmodern tradition of misery the essayist is targeting…

Have a look at the top comment from 1 year ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=612276

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#44

Post by Goladus »

tel wrote: post #27

This essay angers me with its presumption. It reads off like a fortune teller reaching for whatever level of generalized sympathy will get you nodding along. Maybe I'm just not sensitive enough to see the boiling resentment and stress in watching families sing Sweet Caroline along with the crowd at the local baseball game, or maybe I'm just far too aware of the postmodern tradition of misery the essayist is targeting…

That website charges $125 for the 90-day course, however Vipassana meditation can be learned for free at donation-supported meditation centers all over the world: http://www.dhamma.org/en/bycountry/

All you have to do is register and attend the 10-day course.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#45

Post by chaosmachine »

Goladus wrote: post #44
tel wrote: post #27

This essay angers me with its presumption. It reads off like a fortune teller reaching for whatever level of generalized sympathy will get you nodding along. Maybe I'm just not sensitive enough to see the boiling resentment and stress in watching families sing Sweet Caroline along with the crowd at the local baseball game, or maybe I'm just far too aware of the postmodern tradition of misery the essayist is targeting…

That website charges $125 for the 90-day course, however Vipassana meditation can be learned for free at donation-supported meditation centers all over the world: http://www.dhamma.org/en/bycountry/ All you have to do is register and attend the 10-day course.

The whole book is available online for free:

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#46

Post by nickpinkston »

iskander wrote: post #39
nickpinkston wrote: post #29

Based on most of the people I know who meditate, they don't seem to be any different from a random sample. Are there studies that show that meditate is good for X? Perhaps the causation is actually that people with X tend to be good at meditating? Just wondering...

I know several people who have taken up meditation and they each have changed significantly through their experiences. Perhaps it's more useful to compare someone who meditates to their former selves rather than some nebulous concept of an "average" person.

Yea, it's quite true about that seeing improvement longitudinally would be better than the "average person". The study cited in the below BBC article studied people (Buddhist monks) that don't pass the self-selection filter though.

This study shows brief mediation gives improvement, however I'm not sure how they controlled for those who didn't complete the experiment. Could those people be self-selecting out of it due to difficulties - ADD perhaps?

Overall - I'm love to try a simple form of meditation to see if it'd work for my ADD self.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100414184220.ht...

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#47

Post by byw »

tel wrote: post #27

This essay angers me with its presumption. It reads off like a fortune teller reaching for whatever level of generalized sympathy will get you nodding along. Maybe I'm just not sensitive enough to see the boiling resentment and stress in watching families sing Sweet Caroline along with the crowd at the local baseball game, or maybe I'm just far too aware of the postmodern tradition of misery the essayist is targeting…

My experience with meditation is that immediately after a long sitting, my awareness of the various "mental events" bump up an order of magnitude. I was indeed seeing the subtle fluctuation of emotions in myself and my family that I didn't even know existed. It was a pretty eerie experience at first, then I gradually got used to it. It's more like a drug-induced experience than something I naturally run into.

It took me several months of experimenting to get to that point when it just "clicked". Before that each sitting did leave me refreshing, like after an exercise, a cold shower, or a long introspection, but there wasn't the same degree of amplified sense of awareness. I believe the latter is what the author is talking about.

What you experience with your newly developed awareness probably depends on your environment. For me, as a newbie, I can't sustain this mental state for more than a few hours. Within those hours I generally feel like staying home, so I don't know what it's like in a social event. Supposedly it takes years of practice for this awareness to stabilize and become permanent, so perhaps by then I can gain more perspective on the various walks of life like the author described.

So yeah, the skeptic part of me can't let me vouch for the specifics, but there's a good chance the author isn't bullshitting.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#48

Post by jonhendry »

tel wrote: post #38
programnature wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for myself, I found the assessment about labeling all experiences as good, bad, or neutral (and then ignoring the neutral bin 99% of the time) to be right on the money. I also find the rollercoaster metaphor to be pretty on the money as well. Yes, there are nice experiences, but they do not last forever and in the end are empirically unsatisfying; as a result, their shadow side is that we compulsively try to…

They're all sensible abstractions of the way we think, but to judge the problems developed by this framework as the root of all dissatisfaction is to take it too seriously. To pass off this conviction as truth is then dishonest. By this model, we're clearly dishonest all the time, but the author does a disservice to the reader through the holier than thou rhetoric. Postmodern angst isn't the introduction of new ideas…

"Whatever happened to good old koans? Just because they're tricky doesn't mean they were an accident."

Koans are hardly omnipresent throughout Buddhism. They're a pretty late addition. The Buddha wouldn't have had a clue what you were talking about.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#49

Post by jonhendry »

nickpinkston wrote: post #46
iskander wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know several people who have taken up meditation and they each have changed significantly through their experiences. Perhaps it's more useful to compare someone who meditates to their former selves rather than some nebulous concept of an "average" person.

Yea, it's quite true about that seeing improvement longitudinally would be better than the "average person". The study cited in the below BBC article studied people (Buddhist monks) that don't pass the self-selection filter though. This study shows brief mediation gives improvement, however I'm not sure how they controlled for those who didn't complete the experiment. Could those people be self-selecting out of it du…

I'm ADD, and I found it to be helpful during a period when I was sitting regularly.

I prefer just vipassana, watching the breath and watching thoughts as they arise and fade. No chanting or 'OMMM'.

An interesting book is "Zen and the Brain" by an emeritus professor of neurology, published by MIT Press. The author started doing zen while in Japan in the late 60s. Over about 1000 pages, he tries to come up with testable hypotheses explaining the phenomena and results of long-term meditation practice.

It's very detailed and dense. There are a few chapters that describe his subjective experiences, but the rest is pretty scientific. There are few illustrations, it's a massive block of text.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#50

Post by silentbicycle »

Estragon wrote: post #20
davidw wrote: post #2

I think that, given a limited amount of time, I'd rather do exercise (cycling) than meditate, as it's a pretty good way of 'getting away from things' and thinking without interruptions, and I also get some physical benefits from it.

I do about 2 hours of meditation a day. This is useful because it builds a huge capacity for emotional regulation and lets me stand in situations I once would have run from or otherwise sought to avoid, and and I can still clearly see what's going on in these situations. Exercise has its merits (I also walk about 2 hours a day) but they are very different. As Suzuki Roshi said "Sit Zazen. To live life without sitting…

That said, 2 hours is a pretty extremeTM amount of time to meditate every day. Fifteen minutes, give or take, will still go a long way. (Fifteen minutes in the morning AND before bed is even better, though, and who doesn't spend half an hour a day just farting around?)
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