A question for those familiar with jhanas. How would physical discomfort affect your ability to meditate? What if you had a headache? What if you had brainfog because of lack of sleep?
How to do the jhanas
41–50 of 112 posts
Re: How to do the jhanas
#42I first heard about these from Slate Star Codex and I wonder if anyone else here did. I can't remember exactly which post
Re: How to do the jhanas
#43Oh spirituality. The only thing that I spent years of life trying to understand and ended up realizing that there's nothing to understand. It sounds corny and cliche but there's no other way I can put it. I have/had meditated for almost 5 years of my life for almost 2 hours a day(unless I am traveling/or sick etc), so I think I am experienced enough to help beginner meditators. Also being from a Sanskrit-derived-lang…
You see the issue though with the approach you're advocating?
"Oh spoiler alert, you will actually feel like you are being more sadder after you started meditating.... enjoy the process"
So I'll start to not enjoy myself by becoming sadder, but I just need to enjoy it?
Re: How to do the jhanas
#44I first heard about these from Slate Star Codex and I wonder if anyone else here did. I can't remember exactly which post
Re: How to do the jhanas
#45> But with just over 20 hours of practice, I progressed through all nine jhanic states. This is simply not true. It would be silly to deny that the author had some particular experience(s), but author absolutely did not have the described (quoted) experience. This "words have whatever meaning I decide they have" world goes absolutely nowhere productive or useful. I'd love it if you all would stop doing it.
I dunno. I heard a story about Ayya Khema that she basically just stayed up all night for a while just committed to learning the jhanas.
One of the problems with all the stuff is that it's very hard for us to know what other people have experienced. So who knows. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. Let's not be so closed-minded about it. People are different.
Re: How to do the jhanas
#46[flagged]
Re: How to do the jhanas
#47One of the interesting insights into society at large is that one of the big divisions of knowledge is into the pots of "benefits others that you know this" and "other". There is a lot of social effort put into spreading political memes (as the easiest example) because that will influence society in a way that is favourable to the meme-er. Ditto a lot of commercially useful skills are spread because it is in everyone…
> they aren't obviously to the benefit of anyone except the practitioner Most of the people I know who've gotten into jhana really do talk a big game about how it's affected their behavior in the world in ways that obviously benefit others. Being more compassionate, kind, patient, accepting, forgiving, etc. Personally I don't think I've gotten to jhana, but if nothing else the traits I've cultivated through meditatio…
Possibly it is a good time to reflect on the following puzzler:
There are people you know who have achieved a jhana but don't talk about it. What are they saying?
Re: How to do the jhanas
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this startup-y way of tapping into meditation i pretty silly but also, idk maybe it's the way for us nerds to achieve these things?
there's no real difference between you, me, and Mr. Gautama in mental structure. circumstances of course matter, but instruction, especially the interactivity is decisive. yes, there's a practice element, to do the dissociative steps well, to get the right body sensations amplified with the right mental ones, etc. the start-up-y way is not better or worse for you if it works. the traditional way(s) work vy constraini…
> there's no real difference between you, me, and Mr. Gautama in mental structure.
This is just not true. There are athletes with sub 100ms reaction time. The average person is over twice of that. It only makes sense that there are meditative athletes whose abilities surpass those of the average guy.
Re: How to do the jhanas
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they aren't obviously to the benefit of anyone except the practitioner Most of the people I know who've gotten into jhana really do talk a big game about how it's affected their behavior in the world in ways that obviously benefit others. Being more compassionate, kind, patient, accepting, forgiving, etc. Personally I don't think I've gotten to jhana, but if nothing else the traits I've cultivated through meditatio…
Possibly it is a good time to reflect on the following puzzler: There are people you know who have achieved a jhana but don't talk about it. What are they saying?
Is the implication that those who aren't talking about it are a set of people for whom experiencing jhana was net neutral/negative for the people around them?
Re: How to do the jhanas
#50A question for those familiar with jhanas. How would physical discomfort affect your ability to meditate? What if you had a headache? What if you had brainfog because of lack of sleep?
> How would physical discomfort affect your ability to meditate
It doesn't really. Unless you're in total agony, it's just another thing in the stew. Jon-Kabat Zinn might be of some interest. IIRC, much of the work he was doing around Full Catastrophe Living had to do with pain management.
> What if you had brainfog because of lack of sleep?
You'll probably fall asleep. Which is okay because you needed it.