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Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

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Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

#41

Post by jonhendry »

blueprint wrote: post #22
spoxaka wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what you say makes sense to me. I too doubt that by some chance Buddhism teachings turned out to be better preserved throughout millenia then any other "very old teachings" whatever it may be - Christianity or something else. Any information has the tendency to be misrepresented. where can I read more about your point of view?

Thanks for having an open mind. :) It's hard to meet someone like you. I learned like this from my teacher, a man who claims Supreme Enlightenment. He says that he is a Tathagata. It's the same name that Gautama Buddha said others should call Him while he is alive. All His teachings are free and for a while before he passed away he was available for answering the public's questions. Here's one site with some decent E…

"I learned like this from my teacher, a man who claims Supreme Enlightenment. "

And there it is. WOOOOOOOOOO

Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

#42

Post by Psyonic »

blueprint wrote: post #38
awakeasleep wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know the simple principle? Is it the golden rule?

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 de…

"but it's necessary to learn from an Enlightened being directly"

Then how did Buddha himself learn it?

Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

#43

Post by jonhendry »

ptc wrote: post #28

Perhaps not as scientifically minded, I still think Alan Watts ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts ) and his accompanying lectures (e.g. http://archive.org/details/BuddhismAsDialogue ) are a great introduction to eastern philosophy from a westerner's perspective.

Zen and the Brain by James Austin (MIT Press) is also good. The author is an emeritus professor of neuroscience, who started doing Zen during the 60s while he was working in Japan.

It's a huge, dense book, about 900 pages.

Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

#44

Post by Alex3917 »

blueprint wrote: post #6
cellularmitosis wrote: post #3

Your Zen is showing :) I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective. This pleases the knee-jerk part of my brain which often screams "skip the mumbo-jumbo and show me the data!" (and I'm slowly working to tame that part of my brain, because I recognize that an "empirical…

No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society. If you accept that medita…

"No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history."

Not sure what basis you have to say that. There are plenty of people who claim to have attained enlightenment who are alive today. There are even how-to guides that tell you exactly what to do down to the tiniest detail, e.g.:

http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2010/11/going-for-str...

Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

#45

Post by blueprint »

Psyonic wrote: post #42
blueprint wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

"but it's necessary to learn from an Enlightened being directly" Then how did Buddha himself learn it?

Gautama Buddha was a special case of someone in whose past lives there was endless awakening. It was for this reason that he was able to be born with very little karma left, making him able to get enlightenment through his individual practice of asceticism. So he's the one who became a Buddha for the very first time from being a Bodhisattva. But keep in mind that his practice was very different from anyone around him, and there was no one who practiced the meditation of the day who was able to be Enlightened like he was.

With that foundation, I can answer your question a little more directly by telling you that he was able to realize Buddha's teaching through the world itself, after he opened his own eyes. (Buddha's teaching means how the world is operated, so everything is its evidence and can be found through any examples)

If you have any doubts please keep asking questions :) This can be dangerous territory if mistreated

Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

#47

Post by blueprint »

zbuc wrote: post #39
blueprint wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be, but there's no concrete teaching of how things in the reality are and how the world works, in current Buddhist scripture, much less any kind of meditation. The meditation that Buddha taught is vastly different than the modern ones. He let his disciples sit when they had nothing to do. What he guided them to practice is not to do with breath, nor concentration, nor compassion. But much more concretely, h…

Thanks for the reply... > Reality can be defined as the set of results which are determined to appear from the problems that things in the world have. Because these results are determined in a fixed principle, someone who knows Buddha's teaching can easily recognize an discuss any field of study at length without difficulty, even if they've never studied it before, because they can realize how it works and thus recog…

I read your message - i've heard but never learned about anatta and anicca, so I don't know what experience you had. But I'm interested so I'd like to confirm about it through simple questions if it's alright..

So, my question is, what could you know (or become to realize) through that teaching?

Thanks

Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

#48

Post by blueprint »

Alex3917 wrote: post #44
blueprint wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society. If you accept that medita…

"No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history." Not sure what basis you have to say that. There are plenty of people who claim to have attained enlightenment who are alive today. There are even how-to guides that tell you exactly what to do down to the tiniest detail, e.g.: http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2010/11/going-for-str...

There are huge numbers of claims, but who among the multitudes has the evidence? If any Buddhist monks or temple has Buddha's teachings, they should also have the ways of life from the problems to the resolutions. But they don't have them, and instead they use meditation to trick people into giving up the real answers. It's the same thing as giving themselves up. This is an important point and the root cause of this needs to be informed to people in society.

Every time I've gone to religious institutions, temples, etc. to verify, 99% of the time they turn out to be false gurus with self-contradictory or hypocritical claims - they just use words to get the better of people - and there's a huge gap in their level of consciousness and that of a truly Enlightened Being.

The evidence that someone is Enlightened and a Tathagata (one who opened his/her eyes completely to the world) is that s/he can explain things in the living reality precisely and can answer all concrete questions on the spot with exact answers. But if I were to go to the Buddhist temples and give them some basic questions they might be very uncomfortable and tell me to leave.

The only reason someone does not give an answer to a question is that they don't really know.

Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

#49

Post by zbuc »

blueprint wrote: post #47
zbuc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply... > Reality can be defined as the set of results which are determined to appear from the problems that things in the world have. Because these results are determined in a fixed principle, someone who knows Buddha's teaching can easily recognize an discuss any field of study at length without difficulty, even if they've never studied it before, because they can realize how it works and thus recog…

I read your message - i've heard but never learned about anatta and anicca, so I don't know what experience you had. But I'm interested so I'd like to confirm about it through simple questions if it's alright.. So, my question is, what could you know (or become to realize) through that teaching? Thanks

You could come to realize the nature of reality, in Buddhist thought. The three marks of reality in Buddhism are anatta(not-self), annica(impermanence), and dukkha(suffering/dissatisfaction).

The basic teachings of Buddha say that all things share those attributes.

So, in practical terms, all things will pass, and things aren't necessarily what they seem, and attachment causes suffering. Even more practically -- don't take everything so seriously.

Re: Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness

#50

Post by omarchowdhury »

blueprint wrote: post #48
Alex3917 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history." Not sure what basis you have to say that. There are plenty of people who claim to have attained enlightenment who are alive today. There are even how-to guides that tell you exactly what to do down to the tiniest detail, e.g.: http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2010/11/going-for-str...

There are huge numbers of claims, but who among the multitudes has the evidence? If any Buddhist monks or temple has Buddha's teachings, they should also have the ways of life from the problems to the resolutions. But they don't have them, and instead they use meditation to trick people into giving up the real answers. It's the same thing as giving themselves up. This is an important point and the root cause of this…

Since when was enlightenment equal to having perfect phenomenal knowledge?

You seem to be equating enlightenment with omniscience. Are you not?

Please tell us what questions you are asking as a qualifier on whether or not someone is enlightened.

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