Meditation: Why Bother?

http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english_3.php

by PieSquared • 17 years ago

84 70 17 years ago

Why spam?

ujal• 17 years ago

The purpose of every educational system is to prepare humans for life. Supposed this we should include at least two new school subjects - meditation and a teaching on HOW to consume information. We see our body as a machine but tend to exclude our mind.

PieSquared• 17 years ago

"The purpose of every educational system is to prepare humans for life."

If only, if only. Very little schools teach us how to deal with the latent abilities of our mind.

radu_floricica5• 17 years ago

Before we put meditation in schools we'd have to scrub it really really well from any traces of religion. We'll be able to do this in some years, with all the active research in meditation, but right now I don't think we can.

swombat• 17 years ago

The purpose of every educational system is to prepare humans for life.

That may be its stated purpose, but in practice, the results seem to be rather different.

Unless, of course, your definition of "prepared for life" is vastly different from mine.

miles• 17 years ago

"The purpose of every educational system is to prepare humans for life"

Required reading assignment: John Gatto's The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher

http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

papaf• 17 years ago

I do vipassana but with a different organisation (www.dhamma.org). For the last five years I have meditated for the recommended 2 hours a day (mostly every day). Its a big time commitment and I often wonder how different things would be for me if I'd taken up painting or playing a musical instrument instead.

However, I don't regret the time I've spent meditating as (knowing me) I would have squandered those hours anyway. Its often easy to forget the benefits of meditation and I sometimes question whether I should carry on. However, in common with others I have talked to, when I stop for a few days all the old thought patterns come back such as anger, fear, arrogance, sadness and desire for material gain. I still feel these things when I've been meditating but they don't control my actions and distort my thoughts nearly as much. Yeah, if I stop meditating it becomes obvious I should start again as soon as possible.

Meditation isn't for everybody. Only a small proportion of Westerners who try it actually carry on practicing long term. However, I'd recommend anyone thats curious to give meditation a go.

koudelka• 17 years ago

The feelings you state above come back, and you view them as a problem, because you've not really made an attempt to understand them. When you view them as problems, and not ephemeral conditions, they become problems.

"Whatever it is, sit with it."

sengan2• 17 years ago

The feelings will always come back. The question is whether they are overwhelming or rootless, and that is a question of view. The various forms of insight meditation help see through the solidity of experience.

KC8ZKF• 17 years ago

"Zazen is good for nothing!" --Sawaki Roshi

radu_floricica5• 17 years ago

That would be a zen joke. Or a very serious thing, depends on the mood.

I'm having trouble with the whole "short-circuit the reason" thing in zen. I get it that it is useful, but it just might not be for everybody.

silentbicycle3• 17 years ago

They're called koans. People in the US seem to be really attached to the koans from Rinzai Zen, to the point where anything that's vaguely surreal is a "Moment of Zen". On the other hand, Soto, the other major schools of Zen buddhism, doesn't even use koans (it emphasizes meditation), and they arguably have about as much to do with conventional Buddhism as getting your picture taken with the Santa Claus at Macy's does with Christianity.

Historically, the association seems to be because the beats and hippies (who were also pretty fond of surrealism) had a big part in popularizing Zen Buddhism, while comparatively, most other forms of Buddhism haven't spread that far past immigrant enclaves.

marvin2• 17 years ago

Meditation doesn't solve any real problems; at least not more than any other religious belief. It seems really strange to me that nerds frown on certain religious beliefs while lauding others. We're in the territory of the unmeasurable here, so I'd say that tolerance goes first.

But a lot of smart people bash the belief in God when it presumably gives meaning to depressed people, or helps drug addicts and criminals get their lives in order. The same smart people praise psychotherapy or meditation for the same results. It's hypocritical. I'm a tolerant guy and as long as other people's beliefs don't get in my way, I accept them. But when rationality and reason are your most important virtues, it's contradictory to support a schism like this one.

These questions are always questions of the current immeasurable, unprovable part of human nature, and should be treated as such. You can't use the words meditation and scientific in the same sentence.

zimbabwe• 17 years ago

Do you know anything about meditation? While its origins are religious, it's a secular practice that's about learning to stabilize your mind and develop inner balance.

It's only religion if you think that you're developing a communion with God through meditation. If you meditate to commune with yourself, then it's entirely sensible to laud meditation while bashing religion. Meditation is not superstition.

radu_floricica5• 17 years ago

Meditation is not superstition, true, but one should still be aware. It does tend to attract the same people. I'm an atheist meditating, and occasionally I have to grit my teeth.

cglee• 17 years ago

I'll submit that it could be measurable and provable, but we haven't figured out how to do it yet. It's quite obvious that after meditation, something has changed within me. I don't know how to quantify it, but it's a marked change. The fact that modern scientists aren't able to measure or reproduce that change doesn't necessarily mean it's not real; it could mean that we simply haven't yet established the tools to do so (or, maybe some have, but are ignored).

The comparison to organized religion is invalid. Outside of the religious context, meditation can be considered breathing techniques that calm the mind.

scott_s4• 17 years ago

I have read studies which compared the brain activity of monks who have regularly mediated for decades and lay-people. There are measurable differences.

edit: an example: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43006-2005Jan...

rsheridan62• 17 years ago

Religion requires that you believe in things that require faith. Meditation and psychotherapy don't. I don't really care about that myself - if Jesus helped you stop smoking crack, great, whether he's real or not, but it's a big deal to some people.

There are measurable effects of all of them, including meditation. You can quantify depression, personality traits, drug abuse, etc. You can measure brain state, skin resistance, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. All of this has been done.

gnaritas• 17 years ago

You don't know what you're talking about. Meditation absolutely solves problems, it teaches you to control your mind and your emotions and most people need to be better at that.

It's just a matter of awareness, meditation is nothing more than practicing awareness of how your own mind and body operates. There's nothing unscientific or irrational about this, in fact it's quite rational.

Meditation is also not anything remotely similar to a religion, nor does it require you to believe anything absurd. That you chunk them together like that says you haven't really ever looked to deeply into the subject.

papersmith• 17 years ago

You have mentioned some important commonalities, but what do you think make psychotherapy and meditation stand apart from religions? Would you list a few of the major differences?

mannicken• 17 years ago

If anything, meditation pulls one away from all harm that religion pushes -- namely lack of one's own will, "sleep-walking", belief in illusions created by other people.

I got away from my stupid childhood illusions and dreams (including religion, love, patriotism, etc) by meditating, taking disassociative drugs and astral projection. After you experience these really perverted delusions you start questioning other delusions and hence get closer to a reality.

So: religion = delusions, meditation = reality. There is a reason meditation is called exploration while religion dictates unquestionable obedience to other humans.

chaosmachine• 17 years ago

In case it's not obvious, the rest of the book is here:

http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_eng...

utsmokingaces• 17 years ago

I been conflicted about whether to pursue Buddhism. Its ideals of not wanting too much makes a lot of sense. However, civilization thrives and life expectancy increase because we work towards our ambitions and wants.

Another reason is that I admire Zen Buddhist practitioners Steve Jobs and Phil Jackson (zen master). Ironically, take Steve Jobs for example, his demanding and often angry management style is the opposite of Zen teaching.

I love to hear yalls opinion on how great achievement and Buddhism can co-exist.

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

striving for excellence is not mutually exclusive with zen.

silentbicycle3• 17 years ago

Buddhism is primarily about reducing the amount of suffering in the world, in both ourselves and others. Part of this includes trying to let go of the cycle in which you think you need _ to be happy, strive to get it (perhaps successfully, perhaps not), then forget about it and reflexively start worrying about the next _ . This sort of behavior ("retail therapy" and subsequent credit card debt, for example) usually causes problems which get in the way of great achievements, or even being able to think clearly enough to enjoy our day-to-day lives.

(This is a quick attempt to summarize the idea usually translated as "desire is the root of all suffering.")

One can do great things because they seem like the best thing to do with one's time, not just because they're terrified by the feeling that they'll never be happy / have a meaningful life without it.

rsheridan62• 17 years ago

I would look at the people who practice the technique rather than the doctrine itself. If Steve Jobs sits regularly and he still acts like Steve Jobs, there's your answer.

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

cutting TV is more important than meditation. If meditation forces you to watch less TV then that's probably where some of the "benefits" are coming from.

radu_floricica5• 17 years ago

Dropping TV is the single most life-changing thing any modern person can do. Mostly because it gets you to wander "what do I want to do tonight?"

menloparkbum2• 17 years ago

Dropping TV is the single most life-changing thing any modern person can do.

I used to think that. Then I did it, and it was true for about 8 years. Now the internet has all the TV I'd ever want to watch in an immediately summonable window right next to all the other info-crack which had taken the place of television. I'm thinking dropping the internet is going to be the next big life changer. I went on a laptop free vacation a couple months ago and felt like I had 6-8 hours of extra time per day. Watching a couple TV shows in the hotel room at night was actually kind of relaxing and quaint, like I'd taken a time machine back to a simpler age...

plinkplonk• 17 years ago

"The feelings you state above come back, and you view them as a problem, because you've not really made an attempt to understand them. When you view them as problems, and not ephemeral conditions, they become problems."

very close to a religious discussion imo. Without acepting the underlying dogma of the mystical school (vipassana in this case), the above sentence makes no sense at all. By this logic two Christians arguing whether music is allowable in Christian worship and its impact on a worshippers mind is valid discussion on HN.

People making unverifiable claims about inner states and so on. What's next - a discussion of the subjective effects of various recreational drugs on the human mind?

I suspect the subjective descriptions of mental states would be very similar "I got high and I observed my thoughts arising blah" "No you didn't do it right .. you should have ... "

"I been conflicted about whether to pursue Buddhism. "

Ok. Great for you.

I would have preferred it if this pseudo religious stuff were left off HN. I am very surprised that this made the front page of HN, leave alone such a high place in the rankings.(I tried to phrase this carefully so as not to violate any HN guidelines).

sunjain• 17 years ago

There is no doubt about the effectiveness of meditation. It is a tool. And certainly Vipassana seems to be as methodical and systematic an approach as can be possible, when it comes to learning(and seeing results of) meditation. However, as in programming, it is important to go beyond the tool/s. And the same is true about this peace thing. There is a similar path (non-dual advaita based on self inquiry), where in addition to meditation, emphasis is given on the root of the problem(or identifying and fixing the root of the problem, which they identify as "I" or mind). In fact, it is very similar to Zen Budhism, in the sense it is very direct, but is geared more more towards knowledge-based /intellectual bend of mind. Here is one interview by Daivd Goodman on this: http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/jd5.shtml. I am sure there must be lot of internet resources on the same.

c00p3r• 17 years ago

There are thousands of attempts to say what the meditation is, but in fact, one should realize it by oneself. For me, for example, that was about to stop looking "into the mirror" and suffering, and starting looking around, but not judging, just see. But this is just a theory. Meditation is the another name of some very simple practice. It could be described as "watch your thoughts". When you can "see", then you can try to "control" this flow, and after that you can try to stop it. Suddenly, after hours and hours of failures you will catch that very moment, and realize this short "gap" between thoughts, while last one already gone, but next one still not arise. Everything will be obvious after this experience, like when you saw the light in the dark stormy night. Of course, this moment was not that when you will drop and forget all your flawed habits or booze and dope addictions, but you will finally have something to compare to.

kleevr• 17 years ago

"The harvest is great, but the laborers are few"

mkn3• 17 years ago

Go to a party. Listen to the laughter, that brittle-tongued voice that says fun on the surface and fear underneath. Feel the tension, feel the pressure. Nobody really relaxes. They are faking it....These are not people who are at peace with themselves. Watch the news on TV. Listen to the lyrics in popular songs. You find the same theme repeated over and over in variations. Jealousy, suffering, discontent and stress.

And here we have the crux of it. This is Nietasche's ressentiment, the origin of moral feeling. Observe the hatred he has for the successful and the contented. They have won at the game of life, in that they fit in, are laughing, are enjoying themselves, yet the author feels that there must be something wrong with them. They must deserve his scorn because he has not achieved the ease and confidence that they show. It must be a chimera. Meditation sets the author apart. He has stamina. He has determination. He has 'grit', and for this he is despised by the masses. Bullshit.

And isn't it suspicious that meditation always leads to a higher place? Isn't it at least possible that meditation might merely unveil yourself to you? Or maybe, more laughably, help you to obscure yourself from you? Or, even more laughably, to obscure the nature of reality from yourself so that you can continue to believe that you have the high ground in some realm of ideas, despite your losses and discontentment in the observable universe? It strikes me as suspicious that someone with this obvious contempt for the masses could take hold of a meditative practice and use it objectively, to discover the true nature of anything, let alone any inner 'true' happiness.

We have only the observed facts that the author has provided, minus his 'insights' into the 'true nature' of these observances or the 'ulterior motives' of the actors he observes.

Zarathustra's advice would be well taken by him, and all who find this article compelling: "Always love your neighbor as yourselves -- but first be such as love themselves"

debt3• 17 years ago

Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Have you been to a party recently? I mean, a serious beer-pong-playing, beer-bonging, naked-ignorant-frat-boy flailing party? They're terrible. Everyone is clearly pretending to have a good time. Everything smells like beer or puke.

Also, have you watched the news lately? I don't think that needs elaborating.

Popular music is exactly as the author describes. No one could possibly be content listening to...wait, they're piping that shit in through the loudspeaker at the baseball game now? Fuck.

The fact that you accept the possibility that those people at the party and stadiums are masking their misery with beer and baseball says more about yourself than it does about the author. You seem to agree, but don't want to come right out and say it.

Starting a company is not socially acceptable. It seems 99% of startups fail. I could easily fit in and survive by getting a job at some major software company, get benefits, paid vacations, etc. Actually, I did and it leaves me with the feeling that the author describes.

I believe the author's "ressentiment" is born out of the belief that the drones at parties and baseball games have somehow given in and given up rather then getting what they actually wanted. Many people, yourself included, mask their personalities with a phony sense of optimism and say, "Hey, mang, leave my friend alone. He may be happy here at this baseball game, getting drunk and probably later falling asleep in your garden."

Also, the author implies that contentment can not be had from the material universe. Again, this may be reason enough to detest the phony atmosphere that permeates the environment of every antisocial activity.

In a way, we have to deal with the drones' innane bullshit, because they can't work out properly what they want. Racism, sexism, nationalism, extremism, isms galore. They'll grab any new idea that works rather than what works the best.

I'm a drone, just a lesser one. Proudly so. I'm not going to get worked up and punch a guy in the face because he dissed the Sox. This shit happens at every game. Every single one.

If meditation slows these people down and forces them to ask things like, "Why am I like this?" or "Is there another way?", then I'm willing to take my chances.

mkn3• 17 years ago

To what part of my comment could you possibly be referring? Let me state that this is a direct invitation for you to find in my previous comment the line or lines that supports your statement about my purported beliefs about 'those people at the party' and that I 'agree but don't want to...say it.' Put up or shut up.

Many people, yourself included, mask their personalities with a phony sense of optimism and say, "Hey, mang, leave my friend alone. He may be happy here at this baseball game, getting drunk and probably later falling asleep in your garden."

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. First, "Have you been to a...naked-ignorant-frat-boy flailing party?", implying that I haven't, or at least haven't perceived the true nature of it, and then, "Hey, mang, " & etc., seemingly implying that this is my lifestyle and that I'm defending it. It's telling that your hypothetical example individual not only is not 'happy...at [the] baseball game,' but that, as proof he is not, he later '[falls] asleep in your garden.' Again, point to the part of my comment that supports your allegation of a 'phony optimism' or retract your insipid allegation.

It's also telling that the author's non-specific use of the word 'party' induces, in you, the concept of the most objectionable kind of party you can think of, one in which the participants are engaging in some kind of blatant mass stupidity, by your judgment. Why would one compare oneself to this particular set? Why choose who one believes are the worst of the worst to which to compare oneself, unless one wants to aggrandize oneself? That is the root of the suspicion. Why not say, "Go to the boardroom of Google. Feel the tension. Everybody is faking it."? Indeed, some do, but only those who wish to waylay the corporate as inherently evil. And they do so by making the corporate out to be the opposite of themselves, who are by definition, 'good'.

Starting a company is not socially acceptable.

I want whatever you're smoking.

I believe the author's "ressentiment" is born out of the belief that the drones at parties and baseball games have somehow given in and given up rather then getting what they actually wanted.

Look at the pejoratives: 'drones', 'given in', 'given up', 'parties' as frat-boy free-for-alls, 'baseball games' as a collection of drones, and 'rather then [sic] getting what they actually wanted'. I submit, based on this portion of your comment, that you are so accustomed to committing Nitezsche's ressentiment that you cannot even see when you are doing it, nor the sheer number of spurious value-judgments that you must make in order to support it.

It may help you to understand that ressentiment is not just dislike for a class that has bested you, but the transmutation of that dislike into a moral statement, the statement that "They are wrong for winning, and all of the qualities that make them the winners are evil, and all of the qualities that make me the loser are virtues."

Actually, [having a software job with benefits and vacations] leaves me with the feeling that the author describes.

I leave it to you whether this feeling is a function of your psychology or a function of the lifestyle in which you were engaged. Was it subjective, rooted in you, or objective, rooted in the circumstance?

aasarava• 17 years ago

You know, sometimes you can have beer, have a laugh with others, and just enjoy being.

JabavuAdams• 17 years ago

> Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Have you been to a party recently? I mean, a serious beer-pong-playing, beer-bonging, naked-ignorant-frat-boy flailing party? They're terrible. Everyone is clearly pretending to have a good time. Everything smells like beer or puke.

You need to go to better parties. Note that by "better", I'm not talking about location or gimmicks. Just don't get together with people you don't like. If everyone likes everyone else, they can all be natural.

tdavis2• 17 years ago

Merely by presenting his arguments in the way he has, he shows that he doesn't actually get the point of meditation (or at least the Eastern philosophies which generally practice it).

If he did, he'd realize that all those people were miserable because they're choosing to be miserable. When they decide to stop being miserable and alter their perception of this subjective, all-encompassing, constant thing of our own creation you refer to as "reality", they won't be miserable anymore. They'll be enlightened.

I mean, he even goes on to question the time he's spent meditating. Questioning anything in this way, i.e. deciding if something belongs in the "Good Bucket" or "Bad Bucket" again simply shows that he doesn't get it. For the love of God (or whomever), if you have any interest in meditation, of seeking enlightenment, of altering your perceptions, just ignore this entire article.

There is a "higher place". There is such a thing as unveiling yourself to you. You can come to understand that there is nothing objective. And you can do it whenever you are ready to. If you feel you must meditate or seek a Zen Master or whatever, then you should do it. But only because you feel you must.

Personally, I'm not through with the game just yet.

derefr2• 17 years ago

You're looking at everything through Zen-colored glasses.

> Questioning anything in this way, i.e. deciding if something belongs in the "Good Bucket" or "Bad Bucket" again simply shows that he doesn't get it.

What this shows, to me, is that he is an empiricist trying to decide if meditation is an effective path toward what he seeks to achieve. It might be that once you are "of the Eastern philosophy", you no longer accept empirical evaluations; however, you have to bootstrap yourself into that sort of thing. You can't evolve straight from a fish into a bird, you have to have a middle stage where your fins (empirical thought) assist your wings (seeking enlightenment) before your wings are strong enough that you can shuck the fins off.

derefr2• 17 years ago

I don't know, that paragraph struck me as true in a way that has nothing to do with meditation.

When I go out with friends, I have "fun." I enjoy it at the time, but not in retrospect. I come home tired. When I go out with the person I love, on the other hand, I truly enjoy myself—even if we ended up doing absolutely nothing but, say, waiting in line all night, I come home invigorated, and remember the night fondly.

This isn't a matter of remembering them fondly. The feeling I recall is that I was able to be myself the entire night; I had none of the "jealousy, suffering, discontent and stress" that comes from a social situation where you aren't truly aware of the motivations of the people around you, and thus have to put on a "face" of only the highest of social intentions and mannerisms (perpetuating the cycle, because then they don't know what your motivation is.) This may be a relic of introversion, of course, but I think everyone can feel it to some degree.

Also, the author is speaking of a different type of party than that which you're thinking of, I believe; he's referring to open-to-anyone parties with bouncers and alcohol—amateur versions of nightclubs. In such a party, everyone is indeed on edge. In a private gathering of only your true, closest friends, you will indeed be able to "let your hair down" and the negative emotions will evaporate... but most parties are not that party. Songwriters; pop, rock, rap, and hip-hop songwriters in particular, go to the more common type of party exclusively; it's part of their their livelihood to attend these "events." Thus, this is what they sing about. I hesitate to reference a song less than ten years old, but this is a somewhat relevant description of the sentiment the author is trying to capture: Glass Danse by The Faint -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSwzvatqE6I

Now, I don't know what all that had to do with meditation, but for the fact that your own mind is another place where you can "let your hair down" and be yourself, and that many people are so socially immersed at all times that they forget that their thoughts are not bound or inspected by the same social contract. I thus imagine that meditation can invigorate you in some of the same ways.

silentbicycle3• 17 years ago

> And isn't it suspicious that meditation always leads to a higher place?

Er, what? Meditation is a chance for you to stop reacting to everything around you, stop reacting to the animal impulses that keep floating up in your mind, and just see the world and your mind for what they are. If somebody cuts you off in traffic or makes fun of some idea that you hold a little too close for your own good, you probably feel anger or irritation building up, but that's just some animal part of your brain making noise. (It doesn't know that not everything is a matter of life and death.) You can let it go, and you don't need to get mad and snap at people because you had a crappy day at work. (That doesn't do anybody any good.) Likewise, don't get so caught up in thinking about a bug that came up this morning, or whatever, that you forget to taste your lunch. You can spend so much time worrying about an idea, something that doesn't even exist, that you forget to appreciate the things that do.

If your idea of a "higher place" is a world in which people stop doing as much stupid shit because they're no longer reacting like threatened animals half the time, then, ok, cool. (I think that capital-e Enlightenment is another idealized thing to drive yourself crazy trying to chase. Not all Buddhists believe in enlightenment, though there are probably as many Buddhisms as there are Buddhists.)

Also, a lot of the religious stuff came into Buddhism because, well, try showing that stuff to someone thousands of years ago in India, then having them explain it to someone else, ... who shows someone else in China how to see their mind working that way, who ... and see if it gets a bunch of their cultural symbolism mixed in along the way. Nowadays, we talk about the mind like it's a computer. Is it a computer? Or do we just talk about it that way because that model seems useful to us? Will that seem weird to people in the future?

coffeemug• 17 years ago

"They have won at the game of life, in that they fit in, are laughing, are enjoying themselves, yet the author feels that there must be something wrong with them."

You misunderstand. After you meditate for a while, especially with a knowledgeable support group (the sangha), you become extremely attuned to human emotions (since you watch them very closely all day long). If you then go to a party, a family gathering, or if you turn on the TV, tiny changes in people's voice, expressions, and breathing will give away what they're feeling - fear, unease, and nerviousness.

Imagine two people that have truly achieved something meet for the first time. Let's say, for the sake of the argument, Einstein and Feynman. Try to imagine in your mind what the meeting would be like. Would they laugh nerviously and use smalltalk? Would they use drinks to break the ice? Would they be, even momentarily, afraid to approach each other? If they are truly accomplished people at peace with themselves, none of this would take place. Now compare this to a typical party or gathering. Do accomplished people who have no need to defend their worth act this way?

The author isn't asserting that he's "better" than the masses. He has simply observed his suffering, and now he observes it in other people. Most "accomplished" Westerners are unhappy, and use incredible amounts of substances to mask that unhappiness (cigarettes, alcohol, prozac, whatever). And if it's not substances, it's behavior (compulsive shopping, addiction to following sports, internet, any kind of waiting for something to happen in your life, and watching nothing happen day in and day out).

It's not contempt. It's compassion for other people's pain.

tptacek2• 17 years ago

Contempt masquerading as "compassion" is still contempt. This argument is any more significant than loving the sinner and hating the sin.

sengan2• 17 years ago

Meditation changes your brain structure which changes your experience. This is in the domain of science, not faith: it is measurable.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090512134655.ht...

At the beginning it reduces the impetus of your emotions. Your emotions do not change, but you do not feel you have to follow them. The biological change is more inhibitor neurones from your neocortex to your hyppocampus.

http://www.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/%7eleggert/lucas_eggert_...

Further down the path, it changes the left/right balance of your brain functioning leading to a more pleasant and holistic experience. This can also occur with a left-brain stroke, but you lose brain functionality that you don't with meditation. Eg:

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=...

While there is a lot of superstition, it is foolish to assume that all pre-scientific experience is invalid. Just like many people with high school science believe in a "scientific religion" (i.e. it doesn't fit with theory therefore is wrong, rather than doesn't it fit with theory? hmm. how interesting!), many Buddhists believe in a Buddhist religion. That does not mean that there is no valuable knowledge gained by the best practitioners of Science or of meditation.

fluffster• 17 years ago

Obviously if you go to a party to relax, you are going to be disappointed.

Have you noticed the similarity with the magic business model?

1. Sit down and watch your thoughts 2. Magic! 3. "harvest your crops of faith, morality , mindfulness and wisdom"!!!!

When you are happy, you are not really happy. If you observe really closely (I mean like really closely), there you will spot it. The horrible horrible evil undercurrent of all-pervading universal sadness.

When the car is moving, it's not really moving. If you observe really closely, you will see that actually it's not moving at all!

>the essence of life is suffering, said the Buddha.

Well perhaps, he was wrong?

It's like saying the essence of the electromagnetic spectrum is red.

Even before we ask whether to bother with meditation or not, let's ask what is the probability that Buddha even formulated the problem correctly?

The first step to solving a problem is to state it correctly.

bhrgunatha2• 17 years ago

We should note that Vipassana is a form of Buddhist meditation, which takes as its base observances the four noble truths. The first of which is: To live is to suffer.

Perhaps if the author tried a form of meditation that isn't based on such a fundamentally negative philosophical basis then on his journey to enlightenment he may find a more enjoyable and charitable viewpoint.

My first encounter with meditation was with a Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I fully respect what I learned from their teachings, particularly about cultivating compassion, but I was put off with this negative base assumption. Later on I learned a form of meditation whose philosophical approach characterises life as a glorious struggle to expand ourselves in every possible dimension of existence, and along the way overcoming our flaws and weaknesses.

To some, struggle might also seem negative, but struggle is NOT equal to suffering - just ask all those struggling to get their startups off the ground whether hard work and effort are suffering?

That's not to say that suffering doesn't exist - of course it does, but I personally don't accept that it is the fundamental condition of humans.

Once you take a different philosophical basis then many of the observations of the condition of others also take on a very different hue.

michael_dorfman• 17 years ago

It's a bit disingenuous to claim that Buddhism has "such a fundamentally negative philosophical basis"-- one shouldn't forget that the third noble truth is that there is a way to end to suffering, and the fourth noble truth is the description of that way.

Furthermore, a lot of translators think that "suffering" is not the most felicitous translation of "dukkha"-- the root words mean "a wheel with a bad axle", and it might be better to translate it as "unsatisfactory".

bhrgunatha2• 17 years ago

Sorry, my intent wasn't to dissuade anyone from Buddhism or to be disingenuous, only to point out that it isn't the only form of meditation and also that the fundamental assumptions taken as the basis for meditation can and do (heavily) influence your approach and view of life.

Personally, I chose not to accept that to live is to suffer or in your words that life as a human being is inherently unsatisfactory, rather that it is a state full of potential and opportunity to grow and help others.

kashif• 17 years ago

I have been for vipassana. My conclusion is that there approach is to cauterization human emotions. I have also tried other meditation practices and find the zen method more to my liking.

Meditation: Why Bother?

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