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Ten years of trying to meditate

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Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#81

Post by bowsamic »

titanomachy wrote: post #78
bowsamic wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Buddhists definitely know about this, but a lot of their writing is pretty impenetrable and interlaced with weird metaphysics. Here's some modern, secular words on the subject: This and linking MCTB (of all things) are the exact dangerous taking out of context I’m warning against. Daniel Ingram is a terrible resource, he should not be recommended

You seem pretty experienced in this stuff. I agree with a lot of what you're saying in this thread: meditation can be dangerous and should be taken more seriously. Treating it as on par with a psychedelic therapy sounds about right. Here's where I think we differ: a lot of people in secular western culture are intensely put off by all the religious stuff that comes with Buddhism. The metaphysics and reincarnation stu…

The Buddha never taught that those aspects are optional and every tradition has preserved them from India to China to Japan, until now! Why are we special that we can forgo all of the religious trappings? We aren’t

Of course the teachings must be made to appeal to westerners. This does not mean totally gutting them

People who won’t accept anything spiritual or religious don’t need this practise. In Buddhism we don’t try to convert, for some people it is simply not their time

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#82

Post by titanomachy »

bowsamic wrote: post #79
bstrom wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested in hearing more about why Ingram is considered a terrible resource, if you care to share.

One reason is that he broke a major taboo in publicly declaring himself an Arhat Then he has this book that is supposed to distil all of the powerful insight practises into a secular path, but everyone I’ve spoken to in his pragmatic dharma community is extremely toxic. It’s literally like the 4chan of Buddhism, huge amounts of racism, lots of depressed teens, very online, lots of people who think they are enlightene…

I agree that a lot of people in that community (and online in general) seem to be chasing after some kind of peak experiences and there's a lot of weird spiritual dick-measuring.

For what it's worth, Ingram himself recommends Kornfield's "A Path with Heart" as one of his favorite books, which is largely about how the goal is to be a better person and that's not the same thing as developing incredible concentration abilities and having intense experiences.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#83

Post by bowsamic »

Hasu wrote: post #80
bowsamic wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have access to that data. Do you? I would guess that about 5 to 10% of people who seriously try the practise for an extended period experience very scary and potentially trauma inducing effects

I can use Google, and found this [1] article claiming over 4 million DAUs for Calm in June of 2020, with trendlines going up and to the right. So the lower bound of your estimate gives us ~200,000 people who would be adversely affected. Looking through negative reviews, it's all complaints about pricing and paywalls. The same is true for Headspace, the second biggest app in this space (I don't have DAUs for them, but…

Interesting conclusion. I don’t agree, but I’ll leave you to it. I don’t even think that it’s possible to have the kind of experiences I’m talking about with headspace, unless it promotes a daily mindfulness practise of more than 15 to 20 mins a day

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#84

Post by bowsamic »

titanomachy wrote: post #82
bowsamic wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason is that he broke a major taboo in publicly declaring himself an Arhat Then he has this book that is supposed to distil all of the powerful insight practises into a secular path, but everyone I’ve spoken to in his pragmatic dharma community is extremely toxic. It’s literally like the 4chan of Buddhism, huge amounts of racism, lots of depressed teens, very online, lots of people who think they are enlightene…

I agree that a lot of people in that community (and online in general) seem to be chasing after some kind of peak experiences and there's a lot of weird spiritual dick-measuring. For what it's worth, Ingram himself recommends Kornfield's "A Path with Heart" as one of his favorite books, which is largely about how the goal is to be a better person and that's not the same thing as developing incredible concentration ab…

Ingrams path produces such people because his path is broken. Look at the results. He had a novel idea for how to “optimise Buddhism” and it had bad results

I don’t really think it matters what Ingrams favourite books are if his methodology has been so destructive

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#85

Post by taeric »

vorpalhex wrote: post #75
selykg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

27 subjects is a pretty low number of people to base this one. In any scientific paper, doesn't Hacker News get super uppity about the small number? I seem to think this one should be treated the same way.

There are quite a few studies here though. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584749/ (online survey, 84 respondants) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32820538/ (meta analysis, 6703 total participants across 55 studies) My reading of this is we can't make claims like X% practicioners have negative outcomes - the numbers are too messy. We can definitely say a significant amount of practictioners do have nega…

I push back against the "of course there are going to be negative outcomes." The evidence at hand is strictly that there are depressed people and that panic attacks and suicidal tendencies exist. Unless the studies show a significant uptick in how many people feel these after starting meditation, this feels akin to the logic people use to show that vaccines cause autism.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#86

Post by bowsamic »

taeric wrote: post #85
vorpalhex wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a few studies here though. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584749/ (online survey, 84 respondants) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32820538/ (meta analysis, 6703 total participants across 55 studies) My reading of this is we can't make claims like X% practicioners have negative outcomes - the numbers are too messy. We can definitely say a significant amount of practictioners do have nega…

I push back against the "of course there are going to be negative outcomes." The evidence at hand is strictly that there are depressed people and that panic attacks and suicidal tendencies exist. Unless the studies show a significant uptick in how many people feel these after starting meditation, this feels akin to the logic people use to show that vaccines cause autism.

It’s more like claiming that weed causes forgetfulness

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#87

Post by feanaro »

bowsamic wrote: post #73
feanaro wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean exactly by "increased neurosis"? How do you define neurosis here?

Selfish or self aggrandising thinking, feelings of superiority, lack of attention to others

Are you describing something which can happen without proper technique/guidance or something which inevitably happens? And I guess I'm wondering the same for the rest of your list of changes.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#88

Post by bowsamic »

feanaro wrote: post #87
bowsamic wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selfish or self aggrandising thinking, feelings of superiority, lack of attention to others

Are you describing something which can happen without proper technique/guidance or something which inevitably happens? And I guess I'm wondering the same for the rest of your list of changes.

It happens for almost all practitioners, one problem is that the secular practise doesn’t offer the “save all suffering beings in the cosmos” narrative that Buddhism does, and so it cannot offer a way forward beyond the insight and into compassion. It usually doesn’t even try to.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#89

Post by taeric »

bowsamic wrote: post #86
taeric wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I push back against the "of course there are going to be negative outcomes." The evidence at hand is strictly that there are depressed people and that panic attacks and suicidal tendencies exist. Unless the studies show a significant uptick in how many people feel these after starting meditation, this feels akin to the logic people use to show that vaccines cause autism.

It’s more like claiming that weed causes forgetfulness

You need way more evidence to really claim that, though. Would be like claiming weed causes laziness in people. I've seen just as much evidence that lazy people are drawn to it. Such that it is a classic selection bias problem.

Re: Ten years of trying to meditate

#90

Post by vorpalhex »

taeric wrote: post #85
vorpalhex wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a few studies here though. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584749/ (online survey, 84 respondants) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32820538/ (meta analysis, 6703 total participants across 55 studies) My reading of this is we can't make claims like X% practicioners have negative outcomes - the numbers are too messy. We can definitely say a significant amount of practictioners do have nega…

I push back against the "of course there are going to be negative outcomes." The evidence at hand is strictly that there are depressed people and that panic attacks and suicidal tendencies exist. Unless the studies show a significant uptick in how many people feel these after starting meditation, this feels akin to the logic people use to show that vaccines cause autism.

All of these adverse effects happened during or immediately following meditation. That metastudy gives a base rate of 8% - that is waaay above background noise.

Ibuprofen is a great drug and I recommend it. It also kills people, is toxic, and can have severe side effects especially when misused.

If something is powerful and has an effect.. it will have side effects and negative outcomes.

Even as a secularist, I think we lost some of safety practices that were encoded in religious meditative practices.

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