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

Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

dsernst.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 63 posts

Re: Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

#51

Post by dsernst »

digitalsushi wrote: post #30

I have tried meditation a few select times and over two sessions in the same year, I had the same experience. I found that I was in some sort of odd state, neither asleep nor awake. I did not have any recollection of my body. But my thoughts were strikingly aware of reality. I felt an overwhelming connectedness to essentially everything. I googled for the sensation and the closest match I could find was an Hindu word…

Author here.

Very similar things happened to me when I first started. Likewise I didn't know who to talk with about it. Feel free to reach out to me (contact info on website), would be a pleasure to talk more with you.

Re: Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

#52

Post by dsernst »

tabrischen wrote: post #47

I like the analogy as a hook and lead in but a bit disappointed to find the actual content a bit lacking, but perhaps that's the point? Would be helpful to include a brief summary of the three different practises of Vipassana or insight medidation as a whole just to provide an introduction.

Ah sorry tabrischen! The idea was Hack Reactor tasked us with presenting a topic of our choosing, but we were only given 5 minutes to do so.

So I'll try to go into more details for you!

The Vipassana tradition I've been taught in includes three techniques:

* Concentration meditation, called Anapana, where you observe your breath. Just watching the rhythm in and out. Trying not to miss a single breath. It helps to focus on just a very small region, like the triangle from your nostrils to your lips.

* Insight meditation, called Vipassana, where you observe the physical sensations in each part of your body, in a systematic way, from top to bottom and bottom to top. This is pretty tricky, especially at first, and believe it or not took me over 80 hours of practice before it really "clicked". If you're trying to teach yourself, I'd recommend the ebook Meditation In Plain English, linked in the post.

* Loving-Kindness meditation, called Metta, where you generate good thoughts and compassion towards yourself and others. This one is even trickier to explain! Wish I could do it justice. But it's super powerful, and especially nice way to finish after practicing the other two techniques, which can leave you feeling a tad 'raw'. There are lots of different recommended ways of practicing Metta, but I'd recommend searching for "Metta meditation" for videos and other descriptions.

Hope this helps! Thanks for the question and I'm happy to do my best with any more.

Re: Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

#53

Post by WalterSear »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #41
WalterSear wrote: post #10

No it's not. It's strength training for your ability to direct your attention. Sleep is the garbage collection.

> It's strength training for your ability to direct your attention. That's an initial, low level in meditation. Not meditation per se, more like getting your mind ready for it. It may take years to go beyond it, which is why a lot of people confuse it with meditation proper. There is a point where your state of consciousness in meditation combines attributes of the waking state, the dream state, and the dreamless sle…

>sleep becomes optional

Do you have a non-anecdotal source for that claim?

tx

Re: Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

#54

Post by WalterSear »

WalterSear wrote: post #29
segmondy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To each their own, for me it's neither garbage collection nor sleep. It's having an organized todo list that's been prioritized.

IMNSHO, it's 'whatever you want it to be'. It causes specific measurable changes to brain function and anatomy.

Not, rather

Re: Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

#55

Post by kybernetikos »

WalterSear wrote: post #29
segmondy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To each their own, for me it's neither garbage collection nor sleep. It's having an organized todo list that's been prioritized.

IMNSHO, it's 'whatever you want it to be'. It causes specific measurable changes to brain function and anatomy.

> It causes specific measurable changes to brain function and anatomy.

So does learning The Knowledge.

Re: Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

#56

Post by mping »

WalterSear wrote: post #53
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's strength training for your ability to direct your attention. That's an initial, low level in meditation. Not meditation per se, more like getting your mind ready for it. It may take years to go beyond it, which is why a lot of people confuse it with meditation proper. There is a point where your state of consciousness in meditation combines attributes of the waking state, the dream state, and the dreamless sle…

>sleep becomes optional Do you have a non-anecdotal source for that claim? tx

I can offer my own experience. I went to a meditation retreat, we were supposed to sleep only 2 to 3 hours a day. I probably slept around that on average. The rest of the time it's just meditation and breaks with occasional meals.

Re: Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

#57

Post by mping »

I think the metaphor is OK, but in my own experience I think it misses the mark a little bit. From what I have learned, you need to GC because you generate too much garbage; one of the ways that meditation helps is that you simply generate less garbage (less scattered, less thoughts) thus you don't need to GC/sleep/whatever that much.

And why do you generate less garbage? It's because you become better focused (concentration) on whatever you do (which by the way brings mindfullness as a side-effect, not on purpose). With proper concentration, you also become aware of the "dirt" (word that was used in the article from the atlatnic) and will tend to avoid this dirt. This is important, because if you want to get better at something, you must be able to recognize what's wrong. The problem with having these insights is that if you don't have a teacher to help you, you will get stuck at best or regress at worse.

Also there are alot of different meditation techniques, and although they are similar, the devil is in the details. I'm sure this definition is not appliable to every type of meditation, and that's OK.

Re: Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

#58

Post by jonstewart »

jonstewart wrote: post #34
stephengillie wrote: post #14

Meditation is one of those things that people aren't allowed to not like. If you say you don't like it or it's not for you, you get overwhelmed and drowned out by the echo chamber.

It makes me really wonder about the "hacker" community that such obvious bunk keeps showing up here. Hackers are skeptical.

To the best of my understanding, meditation is a mental activity. You sit still and... do what, exactly? Think of nothing? How does one think of nothing? Is meditation another word for daydreaming? How can we be sure that any two people are "meditating" in the same way, since it's an unobservable mental state? And are proponents of meditation simply saying that sitting still, being calm, and focusing one's attention (or _not_ focusing one's attention? which is it?) has benefits over running around like a chicken with its head cut off? Doesn't that fall into the "no shit, Sherlock" realm of common sense?

Any "science" on meditation faces the same problems that "psychology" faced ~100 years ago, when practitioners simply described their mental states. It was only when psychology embraced empiricism and left self-descriptions of mental state behind that it was able to advance as a science.

Re: Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

#59

Post by dsernst »

mping wrote: post #57

I think the metaphor is OK, but in my own experience I think it misses the mark a little bit. From what I have learned, you need to GC because you generate too much garbage; one of the ways that meditation helps is that you simply generate less garbage (less scattered, less thoughts) thus you don't need to GC/sleep/whatever that much. And why do you generate less garbage? It's because you become better focused (conce…

What sort of meditation are you experienced with? Just curious :-)

Re: Meditation Is Garbage Collection for Your Mind

#60

Post by dsernst »

jonstewart wrote: post #58
jonstewart wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me really wonder about the "hacker" community that such obvious bunk keeps showing up here. Hackers are skeptical.

To the best of my understanding, meditation is a mental activity. You sit still and... do what, exactly? Think of nothing? How does one think of nothing? Is meditation another word for daydreaming? How can we be sure that any two people are "meditating" in the same way, since it's an unobservable mental state? And are proponents of meditation simply saying that sitting still, being calm, and focusing one's attention…

Ah, like you say, there are many different techniques. The type I'm describing in the OP is Vipassana[1], which is a systematic scan of physical sensations, part by part throughout the body. Not 'thinking of nothing', nor 'daydreaming'. Of course, some other people do use those sorts of techniques, so confusion abounds.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassanā

Post reply on HN