Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 103 posts

Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study

#51

Post by stretchwithme »

jdtang13 wrote: post #44

Western "Buddhism" is totally messed up, and you can see this from the strange behaviors of its practitioners. The majority of Buddhists in the West aren't a part of a community with a living Buddhist tradition, and they don't read or write in a language that has evolved with the particularities of the Buddhist religions. American Buddhists, in particular, don't have an idea of "initiation," "dharma transmission," an…

I've come to believe that community practice of a thing isn't necessarily any better. For example, Buddhism is the dominant tradition in Myanmar. But that didn't stop the burning of hundreds of Rohingya villages.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2017/0928/Is-Rohingya...

Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study

#52

Post by hosh »

sp332 wrote: post #35
maxxxxx wrote: post #7

People need to understand that the stuff like meditation that's popular right now and gets taught is just a very small subset of Buddhist practice. Real Buddhist teachings go much further. Same for yoga. Yoga is meant to be a way of life but what most Westerners see is just a form of aerobics with a few spiritual words sprinkled in.

Big workout movements in the US (and elsewhere I guess) took the physical parts of yoga and left the spiritual parts behind starting in the 80's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_as_exercise Plenty of people do remember that yoga has a spiritual component though, which caused a lot of confusion when it was added to some schools' PE classes. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-appeals-court-yo...

Tangent: there's a great history on modern yoga ... huh, I forgot the title of the book. It is in my Kindle library somewhere. The book talked about how various yoga teachings came into America, starting as far back as Ralph Waldo Emerson. It also talked about some of the distortions of Tantra from India when it came out to the US.

Christopher Wallis's Tantra Illuminated has a section on the history of classical non-dual Shaiva Tantra, and how parts of it evolved (or perhaps, devolved) into the modern yoga, which then got imported into America.

Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study

#55

Post by hosh »

drb91 wrote: post #16
maxxxxx wrote: post #7

People need to understand that the stuff like meditation that's popular right now and gets taught is just a very small subset of Buddhist practice. Real Buddhist teachings go much further. Same for yoga. Yoga is meant to be a way of life but what most Westerners see is just a form of aerobics with a few spiritual words sprinkled in.

Ironically, the biggest evidence of this here might be the idea that the ego should be kept as small as possible. Whether or not it's a real thing, it still needs maintenance (arguably a huge benefit of meditation), and there's probably a healthy size (though I hate this spatial metaphor; people are far more complex than that).

My understanding of Adyashanti's teachings is that... the ego doesn't really go away. It is clearly seeing through the ego (that the ego is not the source of identity) that allows the egoic impulse to stop interfering with experience. That individuality does not go away with unity consciousness, and then there is "no-self", that is, no inherent self. I speak about Adyashanti's teachings, but I find this echoed in many teachers. It's just that his words seem to convey some of this better for me.

"Ego" is a fairly loaded word too. Most people don't use that word in the same sense that psychologists do, and psychologists don't have a consensus view on what ego means. In the vernacular, it tends to refer to pride, arrogance, and defensiveness.

Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study

#56

Post by maxxxxx »

b6 wrote: post #24
protonimitate wrote: post #4

>> Though yoga and meditation were originally intended as ways to calm the ego, many non-Buddhist practitioners do these activities with an eye to self-improvement or calming personal anxieties. I have noticed meditation being pitched more and more as a self-help/productivity tool/cure all for a range of issues. Is the main difference between 'traditional' (for lack of a better word) and Western meditation just the m…

I don't think westerners are missing anything, at least not anything more than people who live in places where Buddhism is typically practiced. I'm western, I live in Thailand, I'm a meditator, and I often feel like some Buddhist scholar compared to Thai people. I think many people feel Buddhism is sort of re-blooming in the west, of course with its own style. There are a bunch of highly respected western monks now,…

It's pretty normal for people to grow up in Buddhist/Christian/Muslim/Whatever culture not know much about that religion. I grew up in a Christian country as a nominal Christian but I know almost nothing about Christianity other than a few holidays and stories.

Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study

#57

Post by girzel »

jdtang13 wrote: post #44

Western "Buddhism" is totally messed up, and you can see this from the strange behaviors of its practitioners. The majority of Buddhists in the West aren't a part of a community with a living Buddhist tradition, and they don't read or write in a language that has evolved with the particularities of the Buddhist religions. American Buddhists, in particular, don't have an idea of "initiation," "dharma transmission," an…

Meh... China has a living Buddhist tradition, and I've hardly ever seen anyone meditate at all – mostly people seem to approach is as a karmic quid-pro-quo to bring themselves good fortune and avoid illness. I'm not sure that's really a superior version of Buddhism.

Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study

#58

Post by rfugger »

mettamage wrote: post #17

> When students were evaluated in the hour after their yoga class, they showed significantly higher self-enhancement, according to all three measures, than when they hadn’t done yoga in the previous 24 hours. I wonder, is this what ego means in Buddhism? Also, is this what ego historically meant in Buddhism? For a long time, people in Buddhist communities would call you crazy if you meditate. Having followed one theo…

Even if yoga or meditation had diminished your ego (whatever you choose it to mean), would that make you less likely to answer affirmatively to a statement like, "Compared to the average, I'm relatively free from bias"? If you really were selfless, wouldn't you always answer "yes"? Or would you answer "no" because "the average" has no meaning once you realize oneness with everything? I'm not convinced it's a useful measure.

There may be other better questions on the inventory, but that's the example given in the article. I also noted that they didn't mention practitioners having scored higher on narcissism, but only on "self-enhancement". (I haven't read the actual study, so this could all just be bad reporting.)

Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study

#59

Post by mindgam3 »

hosh wrote: post #52
sp332 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big workout movements in the US (and elsewhere I guess) took the physical parts of yoga and left the spiritual parts behind starting in the 80's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_as_exercise Plenty of people do remember that yoga has a spiritual component though, which caused a lot of confusion when it was added to some schools' PE classes. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-appeals-court-yo...

Tangent: there's a great history on modern yoga ... huh, I forgot the title of the book. It is in my Kindle library somewhere. The book talked about how various yoga teachings came into America, starting as far back as Ralph Waldo Emerson. It also talked about some of the distortions of Tantra from India when it came out to the US. Christopher Wallis's Tantra Illuminated has a section on the history of classical non-…

The Subtle Body by Stephanie Syman. Great read.

Re: People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study

#60

Post by rfugger »

jrs95 wrote: post #23

That's weird, usually people claim the opposite. Perhaps perceiving having less of an ego is actually a symptom of having a huge ego. I wouldn't know; I've barely got an ego at all.

"My ego is the smallest. Truly tiny. Everyone says I basically have no ego."
Post reply on HN