Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies

Have you lived in a large city with a very apparent homelessness crisis, such as san francisco?

The homeless in places like SF are routinely experiencing serious emergencies, invariably need money and shelter, and are passed by tens of thousands of people each day who have the abilities to help them.

Of those tens of thousands of people who pass a homeless person who's clearly in need of help, perhaps 100 will give them some money, perhaps 5 will pause to ask if they can help, and perhaps 1 will actually take a not-insignificant amount of time to try and assist them.

These numbers are certainly not perfectly accurate, but from the people-watching I've done in the bay area, I can easily and confidently say that the average response to a stranger who has the class-signifiers of being homeless, even if that person appears to be having a seizure or other crisis, is to ignore them entirely.

I think my observations align closely with the parent comment's observation, and I absolutely believe it is representative of the people who go to meditation courses in the bay area.

I've seen a similar effect in a subset of people that get super into psychedelics. In some cases, they seem to lead to a hyper inflated ego.

> Yet a growing body of research suggests that such stories may be surprisingly common, with one study from 2019 showing that at least 25% of regular meditators have experienced adverse events, from panic attacks and depression to an unsettling sense of “dissociation”.

The 25% number is pretty striking, if true. You see people recommending meditation without reservation, and discounting adverse effects as "exceptionally rare". Over the years I've begun to see more and more stories of people having deeply destabilizing experiences with meditation, and it concerns me how quickly people dismiss that possibility. There's even an attitude of "oh, that's a normal part of the process, just keep working through it and you'll come out the other side". But there's usually no informed consent going into a practice that this might happen.

(And going back to psychedelics -- I have a similar complaint about people's attitudes around "bad trips". Psychonauts like to say "there's no such thing as a bad trip, only difficult ones", but I think that dangerously discounts how destabilizing trips can be sometimes.)

Have you checked BiteCode_dev's response? And still think meditation is a "scientifically quantifiable practice"?

Swami Vivekananda has a dedicated book on "Raja Yoga" in detail.

I recommend - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.abdula.pra... app. I am a subscriber for years and this one has the authentic breathing patterns.

I never really got mindfulness. I mean, yes: Being somewhere and juat being there in the moment and recognizing it in all its detail and on purpose can be good. Just like it can be good to look out of the window when all you do all day is staring out of the window.

But I think a state of no thought, where things just flow in your absence is just as (if not more) important. Be it when you play music and stop thinking and just do. Or when the same happens in sports, coding, painting, walking whatever.

The thing about mindful people is (at least judging from the small sample size I know) that they like to be mindful about everything. And they don't look well or relaxed. Just like this behavior is yet another form of escapism.

Mindfulness, sure. But it is by far not the only state of mind that you should bw in.

I've seen this too; guy had a bipolar episode. Teacher told him he'd ruined everything, and would have to start again.

More generally, Buddhist medicine would be a good thing, as Ghandi might have put it. The heart of Buddhist medicine is that life is short, suffering is unavoidable, and that the best treatment is to teach and practice Buddhism.