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

Meditation: Why Bother?

vipassana.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 80 posts

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#71

Post by Estragon »

silentbicycle wrote: post #50
Estragon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do about 2 hours of meditation a day. This is useful because it builds a huge capacity for emotional regulation and lets me stand in situations I once would have run from or otherwise sought to avoid, and and I can still clearly see what's going on in these situations. Exercise has its merits (I also walk about 2 hours a day) but they are very different. As Suzuki Roshi said "Sit Zazen. To live life without sitting…

That said, 2 hours is a pretty extremeTM amount of time to meditate every day. Fifteen minutes, give or take, will still go a long way. (Fifteen minutes in the morning AND before bed is even better, though, and who doesn't spend half an hour a day just farting around?)

Yes, I don't mean to imply that two hours a day is a necessary threshold. I brought that up in response to the statement about exercise, to highlight how valuable it is to me.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#72

Post by microtonal »

Avshalom wrote: post #15

>And just because of the simple fact that you are human, you find yourself heir to an inherent unsatisfactoriness in life which simply will not go away. You can suppress it from your awareness for a time. You can distract yourself for hours on end, but it always comes back--usually when you least expect it. Or you can embrace that inherent unsatisfactoriness and affect real change in the world. >Examine each of these…

I can understand your conclusion and sentiment. It is also a trap one can easily fall into during meditation, and can lead to both the extremes of anti-materialism and pure hedonism, as can be seen also in Buddhist (and other) cultures.

This is exactly why the Buddha and later teachers emphasize on taking the middle road. In the end, meditation is observing things as they are, and theoretically you could do this while being an anti-materialist or a hedonist. However, people usually become anti-materialists because they want to block out a large collection of 'distractions', such as pleasanties. They would always be practicing half: such distractions are also part of reality. Hedonists on the other hand, easily become attached to their wealth, making progress in meditation hard as well. So teachers always advise to take a balanced approach to meditation: do not become an ascete, do not indulge too much in wealth, do not be lazy, also avoid zealotry. The mind, and world as it is in the moment provides all the necessary circumstances to learn to understand the mind.

Then there is a practical dimension as well: a starving person is probably not able to meditate, a very wealthy person is probably not very willing to meditate. My personal interpretation of Buddhist ethics is, that it is aimed to create the circumstances for as many people as possible to reach enlightenment, and is not an absolute ethic system.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#73

Post by aranazo »

asdflkj wrote: post #60
silentbicycle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meditation isn't a cure, it's just a good way to actually hear the alarms that may have been going off for years - a diagnostic technique. You hear all of the (demons? background processes?) that you've gotten tuned out, and realize how much mental energy they drain. (Hold on - maybe I have email. And while I'm there - are people on HN voting me up? What was I saying?) Since meditation is basically just sitting still…

Saying that meditating is "you just sit" is like saying that exercise is "you just move". You'll get somewhere doing only that, but not very far. Things in life that are simple, we already all do--like wiping our asses. On the other hand, meditation ends up working for some people and not others, and different people require different amounts of time and effort to get anywhere. This indicates that meditation is like…

With the school of Zen I am familiar with you pretty much do "just sit". The practice is called Shikantaza, literally "Just sitting" in english. With 10% chanting and bowing afterwards.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#74

Post by ca98am79 »

I did a 10-day vipassana meditation course and it changed my life. Meditation helps you to understand yourself and your thoughts, and I can't think of anything more important than that. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#75

Post by cylinder714 »

silentbicycle wrote: post #62
jonhendry wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Whatever happened to good old koans? Just because they're tricky doesn't mean they were an accident." Koans are hardly omnipresent throughout Buddhism. They're a pretty late addition. The Buddha wouldn't have had a clue what you were talking about.

Yeah, but "Buddhism" in the US means Soto and (especially) Rinzai Zen, since the Beats (esp. at the San Francisco Zen Center) did so much to popularize it. Otherwise, Buddhism has mostly stayed in local ethnic enclaves.

Insight meditation, a.k.a. "vipassana", has made big strides, thanks to Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock in California, as well as S.N. Goenka's centers around the country.

Regarding Zen, koans are a feature of Rinzai, whereas Soto centers on just sitting.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#76

Post by asdflkj »

aranazo wrote: post #73
asdflkj wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that meditating is "you just sit" is like saying that exercise is "you just move". You'll get somewhere doing only that, but not very far. Things in life that are simple, we already all do--like wiping our asses. On the other hand, meditation ends up working for some people and not others, and different people require different amounts of time and effort to get anywhere. This indicates that meditation is like…

With the school of Zen I am familiar with you pretty much do "just sit". The practice is called Shikantaza, literally "Just sitting" in english. With 10% chanting and bowing afterwards.

AFAIK, Shikantaza is only done after you've had a good amount of experience with other, more structured forms of meditation, like counting breaths or following the breath. At this point, you should already have some idea of where you're going, and "just sitting" will be more than just sitting to you.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#77

Post by ulvund »

ca98am79 wrote: post #74

I did a 10-day vipassana meditation course and it changed my life. Meditation helps you to understand yourself and your thoughts, and I can't think of anything more important than that. I highly recommend it to everyone.

How did it change your life?

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#78

Post by delackner »

This is very odd. The Buddha expressly forbade charging money for a Vipassana course (yes, Vipassana is that ancient). A real 10 day course is 100% free, including room and meals.

Some have suggested simply reading the sutra or running your own course at home, and I won't say it is impossible to achieve the benefit of meditation this way, but the distractions of the world will make it very difficult to really get started.

This is why when you go to a Vipassana course, you are instructed to bring no books, no electronic devices, not even a pen to write, as any and all activities will simply help your mind to become distracted from the monumental task at hand.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#79

Post by ca98am79 »

ulvund wrote: post #77
ca98am79 wrote: post #74

I did a 10-day vipassana meditation course and it changed my life. Meditation helps you to understand yourself and your thoughts, and I can't think of anything more important than that. I highly recommend it to everyone.

How did it change your life?

It is a 10-day silent meditation, so you can't read or write or speak to anyone for the entire 10 days. This means that you are stuck inside of yourself, with no distractions, for 10 days. What happens is a lot of your problems come to the surface and you are forced to deal with them, and meditation helps you to deal with them. After the course, I have been able to use meditation to better understand myself, and my thoughts, and to deal with anxieties and problems that come up in my life. Email me if you have questions about it.

Re: Meditation: Why Bother?

#80

Post by aranazo »

asdflkj wrote: post #76
aranazo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the school of Zen I am familiar with you pretty much do "just sit". The practice is called Shikantaza, literally "Just sitting" in english. With 10% chanting and bowing afterwards.

AFAIK, Shikantaza is only done after you've had a good amount of experience with other, more structured forms of meditation, like counting breaths or following the breath. At this point, you should already have some idea of where you're going, and "just sitting" will be more than just sitting to you.

I sit at a Dojo regularly and occasionally do introductions. We don't teach counting, but do teach following the breath at the nostrils and settling the mind in the hands, as things to come back to once the mind has wandered. There is some technical stuff about posture to learn but basically you just turn up and sit. If they do it differently somewhere else that's cool too, lineages vary.
Post reply on HN