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My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

danlawton.substack.com

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Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#551

Post by potatoman22 »

nineplay wrote: post #318
potatoman22 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why villainize the "white American", portraying them as "knowing better"? Yes, the mischaracterization of Buddhism is disrespectful, but it comes from ignorance, not malice.

It is ignorance that borders on arrogance. They must know that Buddhism is over two thousand years old. They must know that it is central to many cultures all over the world. Yet they somehow are confident that their way is the 'right' way.

Perhaps you should approach this issue with more compassion.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#552

Post by bamboozled »

_y5hn wrote: post #185
ljm wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't conflate mindfulness (or capital M mindfulness, you could say) with meditation either. Meditation has always been a deeply spiritual practice; Mindfulness attempts to turn it into a psychological, clinical one.

From the article: > "I spent my last day in Los Angeles riding on a Segway, buying legal marijuana and staring at some turtles in an on-campus pond at UCLA. I was unsettled yet intrigued by Britton’s message. Some of the adverse experiences she had described were similar to challenges I had faced. But, at this point I was a decade into my intensive mindfulness meditation practice. I was too deep to get out. " There's…

I think it's a bit of a I want my cake and I want to eat it too mentality, or maybe just ignorance. The Buddha did teach to refrain from taking intoxicants, I guess there was a reason he said that?

For some reason, since meditating fairly regularly over the last 5 years, I seem to be quite attune to the troubles drugs and alcohol cause me. It's probably one of the dangers of new practitioners who download applications and get started without any background fall into, they haven't read some of the wise teaching that other may have been exposed too.

I'm not a Buddhist per-se, but I do believe the teachings exist for a reason.

I also remember having a very rough time early in my practice, I think I did too much too early and I was also using Marijuarna which seemd to make some of the issues worse. I backed off that and I recovered and meditate now with no issues.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#553

Post by denton-scratch »

coldtea wrote: post #25

> When Buddhism Goes Bad - How My Mindfulness Practice Led Me To Meltdown Well, meditation and buddhism are supposed to be a way of life, not a stress reliever or a passtime. You can't be living like a modern westerner in the rat race and do buddhism on the side (or merely try to half-follow some general tenets in your everyday totally non-bhudist life). Or rather you can, and thousands do, and there are fancy retrea…

> You can't be living like a modern westerner in the rat race and do buddhism on the side

Well, you can, actually. Many people do, and they're not fakes (or "tourists"). It's not easy, and Eastern teachers aren't best-positioned to help Westerners with the difficulties.

There are Western teachers who have been trying to develop ways of teaching Buddhism to Westerners that address the problems. I believe Trungpa was the best of these teachers (he obviously wasn't a Westerner, but he understood Westerners better than any other Tibetan teacher, I think).

I studied under a Western student of Trungpa. I think my teacher was too afraid of letting-go of the ethnic and cultural baggage; all of his teachers were Tibetan masters, and I think perhaps he felt diminished for not being a real Tibetan.

So I don't think the Western teachers have nailed it yet. I'm sure some Western teacher will eventually figure-out a teaching programme that works fairly reliably for Westerners.

But they won't be able to "de-fang" Buddhist practice; it's intrinsically dangerous.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#554

Post by denton-scratch »

Nursie wrote: post #56
coldtea wrote: post #25

> When Buddhism Goes Bad - How My Mindfulness Practice Led Me To Meltdown Well, meditation and buddhism are supposed to be a way of life, not a stress reliever or a passtime. You can't be living like a modern westerner in the rat race and do buddhism on the side (or merely try to half-follow some general tenets in your everyday totally non-bhudist life). Or rather you can, and thousands do, and there are fancy retrea…

So to your mind this can all be neatly dismissed as "doing it wrong"? The guy in the article was a teacher himself, not someone just casually dabbling, and mentions that the people studying the negative effects are encountering trainers and teachers more often than casual meditators.

He was teaching "Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction", which isn't really a thing. If anything, it's an example of the very commercialised kind of mindfulness teaching that he's railing against.

If you visit the website mbsrtraining.com, the second link on the main menu is "Buy MBSR". Looks like the course materials cost just under $200. You also need to buy videos, attend retreats, co-facilitate retreats, and have supervision, as well as doing a lot of private meditation, if you want to be an accredited teacher. Sounds like a significant investment of time and money.

I can't find out from the website what licence these teaching materials are distributed under; that's a bit shifty, because I bet you're not allowed to reproduce them or distribute them.

Anyway, I wouldn't make that investment, just to sort myself out; I'd expect a return on investment. You get that by gathering paying students.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#555

Post by denton-scratch »

leksak wrote: post #340

I'll acknowledge some bias on my part as someone who has experienced more disassociative episodes (unrelated to meditation) than I care to have had but I think some of the replies here are very callous given how scarring I've found those experiences to be. My first contact with mindfulness-based meditation was cognitive behavioural therapy through mental health professionals and haven't received any warnings to heed.…

I also did CBT; and I also was passed on to an 8-session mindfulness course.

I hated CBT; and having 30 years' experience of mindfulness training from a proper Buddhist teacher, I found the mindfulness sessions awfully shallow.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#556

Post by denton-scratch »

bingu wrote: post #44
Zababa wrote: post #21

This is probably a relatively naive observation, but I've found that the way some people describe meditation and how their mind change is sometimes the same as how people describe their experience under psychadelics. These bad side effects of meditation sound a bit like a bad trip, but without being able to tell yourself that it's chemically induced and thus will stop in a few hours.

Yes. From experience I can attest that they are two doors to the same house, so to speak.

And I can attest that only one of those doors leads to intoxication.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#557

Post by denton-scratch »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #46

> And I didn’t have a history of any major trauma prior to the retreat Yeah, right. > in 2009 I started a fist fight in a French Quarter bar … I broke a window with my fist, misplaced my shirt, and guzzled about 16 bottles of Miller High Life … > That … represented a constant battle I had waged over the prior decade with anger and other negative emotions. I drank too much. I occasionally smashed printers that jammed.…

> Would put my money on unacknowledged childhood trauma.

My ex is a very experienced and well-trained child psychotherapist. She insists that all adult psychological problems are caused by childhood trauma.

She seems to rely heavily on R.D.Laing for that (she trained at the Tavistock); I thought Laing had been discredited, but it seems that nowadays he's back in favour.

[Edit] I don't agree with my ex. I think she must have fallen down an antipsychiatry rabbit-hole.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#558

Post by denton-scratch »

SyzygistSix wrote: post #189

I am nowhere near the experienced meditator or Buddhist student that the author is but this part stuck out: " I described how on numerous occasions all my thoughts disintegrated and I bathed for extended periods of time in states of deep, non-conceptual bliss. I thought awakening was right around the corner " Isn't this particularly warned against in meditation? To me this is more akin to trance and in Buddhism, more…

"Bliss" is a side-effect of practice. It's a common error to mistake it for progress. Your teacher will draw your attention to the mistake - if you have a teacher.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#559

Post by denton-scratch »

mtalantikite wrote: post #280
sjayasinghe wrote: post #242

I interpret the author’s difficulties and frustration as a byproduct of a particular misapprehension of Buddhist teachings in modern society. Many modern-day practitioners, both in the east and the west, are under the impression that simply by mechanically practicing mindfulness meditation they will eventually reach a state of enlightenment. Unfortunately, this is a misunderstanding that the Buddha himself addressed…

Came here to say something similar. When I was about 20 some close friends of mine started practicing (and eventually ordained) with the American Theravadin monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu, which got my meditation practice started. Unfortunately I made the mistake of doing a lot of sitting and not a lot of learning of the Buddha's teachings at that time, other than reading some Pali translations and listening to Thanissaro B…

> Read the sutras

My teacher was disdainful of the sutras. He would quote from them from time-to-time; but his view was that there is no sutra with a living, breathing lineage. He said there waas no way to check that your understanding of a sutra was correct. He favoured relying on more "modern" texts (i.e. mediaeval!) for which there was a living lineage - at least one living teacher, who could trace his training back to the author of that text.

Trungpa said that the teachings were like bread; they should be consumed fresh and warm.

Re: My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown

#560

Post by stelonix »

gameshot911 wrote: post #489
cyberpunk wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy. Agree with everything, although I would say at least in Soto 45 mins seems to be the maximum for one period during sessin, and 15 of that will be kinhin (walking meditation), I tend to do about an hour a day in two sessions, but any longer and there isn’t really any reward. Drugs are a hard no, I mean do them all you want but don’t combine the two.

>Drugs are a hard no, I mean do them all you want but don’t combine the two. Why not?

As a counter point, there are meditative practices that use cannabis and/or DMT.
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