Early on in my life I was drawn in by proverbs and other pieces of wisdom, in an attempt to fill in the gaps of what I thought was missing, to fix myself and make me feel whole. Then mindfulness presented itself to me and it gave me a feeling that everything just worked - it was simple and applied to everything; but I couldn't hold onto it. I wanted to just be, and be ok. Non-dual mindfulness felt like the answer to that problem, but while it sounded right in theory, I still felt that it was something I had to achieve or maintain.

When I read The Tao of Pooh, everything clicked for me. I could be myself without trying. My whole life has become open-ended. It also helped me to understand something that always nagged at me - how could some people appear to be mindful from birth, without having read anything about mindfulness? - People who seemed to always grow and learn in a way that upends their nature continually (nature vs. nurture?), while I felt that there was always something I was missing.

The answer(for me) was 2 things -an ability to see myself as whole, despite the capacity for personal growth; -and complete/lazy faith in my intuition.

(Intuition being this kind of thing that everyone is born with - and so in my view, the only thing that could transcend the differences between every living being. The differences in access to teachings, wisdom, philosophies, religion, culture, etc.)

I'm curious if anyone here has felt similar with meditation/mindfulness, or has had experience with both that and taoism and what that journey was like for you.

> The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff ... is a charming work that has attained a wide readership. There is nothing wrong with enjoying it for itself. But it reveals much more about how the Daodejing as been appropriated to illustrate Western Romanticism than it does about the Daodejing itself. (See later in this section for more on Romanticism).

and, later on, here's what he has to say about the appropriation of the Daodejing and Daoism for Romanticism:

> We see a similar trend in the West. In particular, contemporary Westerners often project onto the Daodejing the assumptions of Romanticism. In reaction against the emphasis on reason that was characteristic of the Enlightenment, Romanticism championed the importance and wisdom of one's passions. But the dichotomy of reason and passion is Western, not Chinese, and the individualism characteristic in some forms of Romanticism is quite alien to the Daodejing. Consequently, we should be on the lookout for how Romantic preconceptions can distort our appreciation of the text.

Sadly, there's not many good non-academic introductions to Daoism out there, and the most popular translation - Stephen Mitchell's - was done by someone who can't even read Classical Chinese, but thought his Zen teaching was a 'good enough' guide to allow him to translate it.

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All this is to say I'm glad the book worked for you, and helped you find peace. It's just not Daoism (nor is Alan Watts!)

I am not an expert on the subject but IMO Taoism has a very similar phenomenon to Buddhism (and indeed all religions or popular philosophies really) in that the “classical”, original, core teachings are pretty different from the organized later movements under the same name. So the context - philosophical, historical, sociological, spiritual - in which you approach the subject and whether you’re doing so on the basis of the original thing or its more organized movements might make it so people interested in it under different contexts both think the other is ignorant or incorrect.

I haven’t read the Tao of Pooh myself but I want to point this out because I think it’s possible to understand Taoism (the classical philosophy) and concepts like Wu-wei without necessarily knowing anything about Neidan and or “Taoist Magic”

If one guy reads the Tao of Pooh and it helps him 'be' — that is the point. Laozi would likely agree: don't overthink it.

That's still a Western way to see it.

For Laozi that wouldn't "be the point". The point of his teaching was not to help people "be" in any which way, but to be in a particular way, within a certain philosophy of the world and our duties in it.

If you're more open to how the three strands ('religious', 'philosophical' and 'literary') of Daoism have merged and mingled throughout history, I really like Ronnie Littlejohn's Daoism: An Introduction published by I.B. Taurus. It's essentially an introductory textbook, but does a good job at showing how these things have always been interacting (indeed, there's quite possibly Nedian references in the DDJ/ZZ/LZ!) and that trying to separate them really isn't possible (indeed, as said, it's an inherently modern, Western distinction between 'philosophy' and 'religion'), while looking at how they've changed over time.

Take a look for yourself https://terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html

Yes, there's two words - but they were often used interchangeably.

I'm still early into reading the James Legge translation, but I've heard that there are many interpretations of the original. Is the tao of pooh not even close to daoism then?

I'd be a bit wary of older translations[0] and try to get a reputable new one if you can. I recommend either Thomas Cleary's[1] or Victor Mairs; the latter was made based off the oldest copy of the Tao Te Ching we've found so far and includes a lot of interesting historical background.

If you want a more historical look I recommend Early Daoist Scriptures by Stephen Bokenkamp, which is fascinating if a little dry. There's also The Taoist Body by Kristofer Schipper which goes into how Taoism is practiced in modern Taiwan: Kristofer was actually ordained as a Taoism priest and learned many rituals supposedly wiped out in China during the Cultural Revolution.

[0] I think Legge's translation is actually alright, but it was really a crap-shoot back then. Infamously, Richard Wilhelms translation of "The Secret of the Golden Flower" is said by some to be so badly done as to in some parts convey the exact opposite of what the text says.

[1] Thomas Clearly (who was also the biggest critic of Wilhelms translation, for context) published a collection of his TTC and Chuang Tzu translations as one book, The Essential Tao, if you're looking to read the latter too. I highly recommend it

This seems like a great list you've compiled, thank you. The deeper dives you've recommended sound very interesting too. I think I'll bookmark this

[0] I recommend his translations of the inner Chuang Tzu chapters and the I-Ching, as well as his book China Root.

If you like TOP better, or think it's more correct, or more wise, that's fine.

(I don't think so, but someone else might.)

I also strongly disagree with some of the sibling comments which insist that Taoism does not have a non-mystical (i.e., non-religious) core. As a disclaimer, I'm not really an expert. But I can see that there is a wise and rational framework there, that does not depend on make believe.

I mean, one would surely expect a certain amount of straying from scholarly excellence and some limits to its historical accuracy on the subject, given the book features Winnie-the-Pooh...

It is a philosophy and adventure book, not about Zen, but filled with many of the author's own unique ideas. He studied Eastern religions and they do inform some of his ideas, which he combines with Western thought in an interesting way. It's off-beat, but I personally found it to be pretty inspiring and would definitely recommend reading it for anyone interested in philosophy.

So, who decides what Daoist belief _is_? And isn't?

this isn't true at all. It's quite simply an Abrahamic religion based around following the teachings of Jesus Christ. There are plenty of different doctrines and interpretations but you can tell what is and isn't a Christian church.

Same thing with Daoism. Daoism is both a religion and a philosophy with very specific teachings and traditions. You can argue about how to interpret it, but that's not what pop philosophy books like The Tao of Pooh are doing.

First off, that's not true.

Second, your argument is tautological: Daoism is a path based around following the tenets of the Dao; Confucianism is a path based around following the teachings of Confucius; Buddhism is a path based around following the teachings of Buddha.

Even if it were true, it wouldn't mean anything.

> There are plenty of different doctrines and interpretations but you can tell what is and isn't a Christian church.

Are Mormons Christian? Lots of Christians don't think so.

Are Catholics Christian? Lots of Christians don't think so (despite the Roman Catholic Church being the largest Christian church).

You're assuming agreement that does not exist.

> Same thing with Daoism. Daoism is both a religion and a philosophy with very specific teachings and traditions.

Christianity does _not_ have specific teachings and traditions.

Catholicism has very specific teachings and traditions. It's a huge church and they've got tons of groups and committees and panels to write books about what Real Christians™ must believe and how they must behave. And they kick out people who are vocal about disobeying.

But of course, non-Catholic churches have different teachings and traditions. Not that they agree, either. If you wander around the Southern US, you'll find tons of Christian churches that are each just a few dozen people, and their teachings and traditions can be unique.

So if Daoism is like Christianity, then there isn't agreement.

If Daoism has specific teachings and traditions, then how is that maintained? Who decides (or decided) what those teachings and traditions are?

> Are Mormons Christian? Lots of Christians don't think so.

> Are Catholics Christian? Lots of Christians don't think so (despite the Roman > Catholic Church being the largest Christian church).

> You're assuming agreement that does not exist.

These are all Christian denominations [0], i.e. distinct religious bodies within Christianity and identified by traits like doctrine. Various Christian denominations have good reason to seperate themselves because each have different doctrine around Trinitarianism, salvation, papal primacy, the nature of Jesus, etc. If you are cynical, you might say they each compete for mindshare and power within the Christian religion.

For instance, the Mormon Church (LDS Church) is a restorationist, nontrinitarian Christian denomination in the branch of Mormonism. [1]

As a non-Christian, it might be easier to look from the outside in and not get distracted by the doctrine and authority differences.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denomination...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_...

Mind that I don't think Jesus talking to Native Americans, hying to Kolob, and sacral underwear are any more farfetched than anything in the King James, but I wouldn't call it the same thing except in the very loosest sense.

If a group self-identifies as Christian, they're probably Christian. At the very least, they're much more Christian than all the people that don't identify as Christian.

If a religious group is based on following the teachings of Jesus Christ, and claims to be Christian, I don't see how you could ever claim they're not without going full No-True-Scottsman.

"It depends on what the meaning of the word ¨is¨ is."

_Is_ the Catholic Church following the teachings of Jesus Christ? According to many Protestant churches, it is not.

(I'm ignoring for the moment that many Protestant churches don't define "Christian" as "following the teachings of Jesus Christ".)

Christianity isn't a membership club; individual churches usually are, but the religion as a whole is not. I can tell you who the Catholic Church recognizes as "Christian"; I can tell you who Protestant churches broadly recognize as "Christian"; I can tell you who the LDS and the Jehovah's Witnesses each recognize as "Christian"; they're not going to be the same.

And so I look at Daoism and I wonder, is there a chain of authorities all the way back to Laozi (Lao Tzu)? Is there a single, dominant sect with some/ many smaller sects? Are there multiple large, dominant sects? Who's defining what is and isn't Daoism?

> this isn't true at all.

Yes, it is.

> It's quite simply an Abrahamic religion based around following the teachings of Jesus Christ.

That's not even the most common of the competing ideas, in part because it is useless because it just pushes the lack of consensus out one level because there is no consensus on what, if anything, are “the teachings of Jesus Christ”.

There is a broad consensus among the theologians of communities making up the vast majority of self-described Christians on what thr boundaries of Christianity are, but it excludes a fair number of other self-descibed Christians, and even common members of those communities often have narrower definitions.

> but you can tell what is and isn't a Christian church.

Lots of people “can tell”, but they won’t agree. Where its important to a discussion, people who are careful will define the term as it applies to the specific discussion. There is no one true right answer separate from specific context of usage. (This is true of language generally, but its especially true of trying to do binary in/out boundaries of communities or other spaces with near-continuous variation.)

Perhaps this betrays some fundamental ignorance on my part, but I think understanding and internalizing the Taoist mindset makes meditation a little less relevant or necessary. Taoism IMO is the sublime wisdom of not attempting to be wise (usually manifesting as inane and unnuanced rules, or clever-sounding quotes) and not neuorotically attempting to conform to practices or ways of thinking forced on us by culture, tradition, ideology, etc. Meditation and mindfulness help incrementally in that pursuit but they are like climbing rungs of a ladder next to an elevator that Zhuangzi built for us.

It’s critical to note that not all paths/forms of meditation involve climbing rungs of a ladder or really any notion of a path whatsoever.

The practice of sitting is only for the purpose of training the mind to focus, which helps some people reach the “non-dual” state more effectively.

For example, the Dzogchen approach relies more on directly pointing out aspects of experience in a way that brings the listener more directly into contact with the current moment/unfolding experience and towards the same state that “ladder” meditation approaches aim to reach.

Many of the modern western teachers have gravitated to a more direct approach as well because it’s more palatable to the audience here (and frankly, far more practical and immediately useful).

Mentioning this because the perception that there’s a steep and long journey ahead is not necessary, and has turned plenty of interested people away from the idea of trying.

With all of that said, I haven’t explored Taoism, and it sounds interesting.

The Tao Te Ching itself isn’t prescriptive at all with meditation and the only time it really comes up is in a reference to a breathing exercise, which you could just as well interpret as a one-off for the excerpt rather than formal or ideologically sanctioned meditation. In later early Taoist texts meditation (particularly breathing exercises) was promoted as a way of cultivating various beneficial forces internally, rather than as a linear path to salvation or anything. But then even later they start getting into the Taoism stuff I don’t care for like meditation as a way of becoming immortal lol. Personally I think it’s possible to read the classical texts and come away thinking the Tao doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with, positively or negatively, with meditation.

I think of OG Taoism as a kind of deconstructivist reaction to Chinese culture at the time - highly political, rigidly Confucian - and defining itself more by where it disagreed with the contemporary schools of thought than by what it promoted. While it’s not contradictory to say meditation is compatible with Taoism, any kind of strong rules or expectations about meditation would contradict with early Taoism just on the basis of specifying some kind of rigid understanding of meditation or prescriptive rules about such a complex thing (because that would be very Confucian).

Thank you for the recommendation

I could never get into the sitting and breathing kind of meditation, but I do find different times I am able to practice very meditative activities such as walking in the woods, aimless wandering, puttering about with no intention just taking in the world. I used to do zen inspired landscape photography and that whole process felt very meditative to me.

You don't need to do sports but if you stop walking altogether your physical health deteriorates. Your joints get arthritic.

So the goal of meditation should not be some Cosmic Epiphany Truth or Satori or Nirvana or Samadhi. Those come and go. The goal is to keep your mind healthy, to get the toxins out of it by doing meditation not too much not too little.

I find that if I try to mediate standing up I come across as aggressive.

There's a lot of misinformation floating around about the subject.

Basically, any activity can be a meditation. So can no activity, e.g. zazen.

Definitely no nurture, an average guy with slightly above average mind raised in former communist bloc, if that means anything to you (kids raised as obedient workers, no critical thinking, no strive for greatness, little self sufficiency and other real life skills, thank you soviet fucking russia union for destroying not only my parents lives and dreams). What I achieved in my life is beyond wildest dreams of my humble parents, but they had a nano fraction of my options.

One thing I have is self-discipline but that may not be related. Or maybe non trivial consumption of weed over past 2 decades in right moments.

I can empty my mind completely with a snap of a finger, and keep it so if I wish. Mindfulness is utterly boring to me as it does nothing since I am there on my own without even trying, just gets me very sleepy and decreases my heart rate to the point of being cold.

Mild extreme sports make the 'feeling whole' part work. Currently probably rock climbing is #1 with a great buddy (american teacher), followed by my eternal struggle to get finally proficient at paragliding. Small kids give a lot of other fulfilment and take away easy sleep and some mental stability, thats a mixed blessing to be polite.

i also notice that there are people who seem to be blessed with a natural ability to be mindful. those people also tend to be charismatic, happy most of the time, full of intrinsic motivation and energy. all those things i'm not ... lol. my understand is that those people experienced no or only mild childhood trauma and grew up with strong and loving bonds to their parents and siblings. this idea is founded on my readings of dr gabor mate. those people do not carry any pain or if they do they have very well developed mental strategies to mange it. if you don't - like me again - then you will always have an inclination to distract yourself from yourself and your emotional experience - the opposite of mindfulness. as a matter of fact this distraction is becoming the default mental strategy to cope with this always present nagging nervousness and irritation. #adhd

When I was in early high school/late middle school, I stumbled upon the Tao Te Ching at the local library. I remembered not understanding much, and the only memory I have left is the peculiar, tai-ji like visual symmetry of the first two (Chinese) sentences (it was one of those books with the source one one side, and a translation on the next). Which definitely sparked a fierce interest in Chinese language/culture.

Other books like the Art of War were a breeze of fresh air: so much common sense.

My belief is that the idea Kabat-Zinn had, which is paraphrased in the article, is good. "Pay attention to the present moment, on purpose, without judgment" - stop, take some time to reflect on your feelings, process them. Maybe just take some time and not "think", where you give yourself some away time from the world. The anecdata from countless people seems to vaguely support the notion that this view on meditation works; I wouldn't call it concrete by any means, but it's as solid of a scientific start as one can get with something like meditation.

Software developers and those adjacent love to tout acronyms like "Keep It Simple, Stupid", why does the buck stop at software? The further one gets into the article, the more outlandish things get: electronic stimulation, microdosing various drugs (mentioned a lot on HN, which I've always found disturbing), cranial ultrasounds, even the stock photo of the lady meditating with a VR headset?

At the end of the piece, Laukkonen provides the following rhetorical question: "[W]hat is liberating about chasing different states of consciousness, and not enjoying the one that you have?" I think a lot of the comments here and the research presented towards the end of the article are in too deep in either side and are unable to see the forest for the trees.

The science as described involves primarily data gathered from direct observation of one’s own experience, rather than studying the external physical world.

This goes very contrary to the statistically driven science most people are familiar with, even though certain hypotheses, experiments and results can be observed in larger groups.

However, if the scientific method is applied rigorously to matters of the spirit it will yield great dividends.

I came to “spirituality” by means of almost rabid skepticism, and extreme distrust towards anything not “based in reality”, or measurable with instruments, slowly exploring and asking questions about the nature of reality.

This extreme skepticism is so important, as belief or faith is the enemy of knowing. I believe the western mind (one with developed rational thinking), when applied to areas on the frontiers of consciousness and reality is an extremely potent tool.

One can marry the logic and reason with intuition, emotion and introspection and go very far into the unknown, bringing back wisdom to enrich one’s own life, and the lives those one shares this knowledge with.

I believe that as a species we’re in the verge of discovering a whole new layer to what it means to be human conscious beings.

I’m not really sure if there is a point to this comment. Perhaps I am just excited to see spiritual inquiry happening in the mainstream, with structure and discipline.

I am sick of strict materialism, and just as sick of the ungrounded beliefs, taken in faith by people involved in the so-called “new age movement.”

I used to walk around at night, walk and walk, because there were precious few places to sit down and rest, and I didn't want to arouse suspicion for loitering or trespassing, so I'd just walk until I was too tired.

I used to hang out in restaurants, either on my own dime or with a charity voucher, and I'd swill coffee, and read/write or something, not with any goal in mind, just passing the time through the night, because I was homeless, unemployed, and constantly at loose ends.

And this, in a nutshell, is what you get with meditation when you divorce it from an authentic spiritual tradition.

Buddhism as the Opiate of the (downwardly-mobile) Middle Class: The Case of Thanissaro Bhikkhu

https://speculativenonbuddhism.com/2013/07/10/buddhism-as-th...

The article touches vaguely upon it, but “meditation” covers so many different things, many of which are completely incompatible with each other, it’s a guarantee that discussing “meditation” leads to people thinking they are talking about something which they are not in fact talking about.

Anyway.

Further, there's a tendency for some people to get ecstatic about something they do - be it meditation, lifting, yoga, keto, psychedelics, etc. - and act as if everyone should be binging on it in order to live a good life. That sort of closed mindedness makes one question just how beneficial these things actually are.

one exception is the western definition of "meditation" which is more like "thinking silently". this is almost the opposite and technically more of a homonym (one word with two different meanings) and not a different interpretation. it's just something totally different which happens to be referred to with the same word.

This pretty much lines up with what meditation has done for me. However, the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself.

As my practice has gotten deeper, I've started to reframe meditation for myself as the process of unrelenting inquiry in the search for base truth. In that pursuit, the practice becomes a process of subtraction of core beliefs and ideas that simply aren't true - or can't be known to be true. As these beliefs disappeared, much of my own personal suffering did as well as so many of the things that were sources of conflict in my mind were predicated on false beliefs.

With this framing meditation can take many forms. Ramana Maharshi famously asked his devotees to start with the question of "Who am I?" and just keep inquiring.

I've been trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy vs meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of false beliefs. But while there are a lot of examples of this in psychotherapy and the mechanisms are well-documented, it's hard to find first-person accounts regarding meditation that aren't just generalities. So I'd find it really valuable to hear some examples of anything concrete/practical -- of course if it's nothing too personal or private.

One of the aims of mediation is to gradually understand that this self is really an illusion, hence there are in fact no problems and no history. Past does not really define who you are, and problems are only problems if you think reality should be different that what it currently is the moment you experience it (which is of course totally impossible. What you can do is alter the future though.)

Now don't get me wrong this self is in fact a very useful interface for interacting with others, etc. The problem is believing this interface, or layer we add on top on experiences really is us, while it's really just a useful concept to navigate the world.

We are all mostly a bunch of habits: this stimuli gives this response because we trained our mind to function this way, were raised that way, live within country X, etc. It's all just mind formatting. Meditation aims to discover this for yourself, which should leads you to train in developing new, more wholesome habits, which will make you and others suffer less. Then since you are mostly habits, you gradually change, and become much saner as times goes by. Saner because you're living more in adequation with reality.

So in a way, psychotherapy can be seen as a dead end for someone who practices meditation. Although it certainly has its uses, even for very advanced meditators who can also develop blind spots without seeing them (more work needed, but psychotherapy can be a useful mirror there).

Yes this is a standard Buddhist (and not even exclusively Buddhist) point, and I'd say it's basically correct, but the problem is that it can, and has been understood in dozens of ways. Some more profound than others, and plenty contradicting one another.

Let me give a fairly psychological interpretation. One of our major cognitive functions is to create and maintain an automatic, pre-verbal map of the world, at the center of which stands a mapped entity labeled "ME". Let's call it the "self-representation". This is in itself fine and dandy, and quite useful; it gives us a sense of being an integrated organism through time, and lets us say things like "yesterday I went swimming". More troublingly, it's also the subject of our self-esteem, and of most of our hopes and worries.

The map, with our self-representation in the center, is not the only thing in our awareness - we're also able to attend to stimula and feel our emotions in the here and now. The problem, and the only problem as far as radical Buddhism is concerned, is that our sense of being is most of the time entirely fused with this self-representation. It becomes the entirely of who I am to myself. (Hence Ramana Maharshi's super direct path: inquire within "who am I").

What meditation does, by slowing down the whole mechanism, is to allow us to feel that there is more to me, here and now, than this running self-representation. By insistently putting our attention away from it, we temporally and partially unfuse from the self-representation. We get little breaks from it, where it either it mostly just stops for a while, or it becomes something I see happening, rather than something I am. And if I can see it happening, I can also train myself to not give it so much importance.

The result is a much vaster inner perspective, and a sense of deeper presence - for a few moments at least. But, usually, the moment the meditator notices these changes happening, the most automatic reaction is for the self-representation to rise back up as the one who wants to own that. HEY, INTERESTING STUFF IS HAPPENING TO ME!!! And there you go go crashing again into stuffy ordinary consciousness.

Hence the usual advice you will hear from good meditation teachers: getting experiences if often easy, but not running after them can take years and years of practice.

Because I've never found much success with meditation, but the split between present-experience and self-representation has always seemed... well, easy to me. This idea of them being "fused" is only something I discovered in discussions around meditation. But then that makes me wonder if I misunderstand it.

Conceptually, I can understand the present-experience meditation aims at as simply experiencing the senses. Which I'll do sometimes, especially outside in nature. It's nice. I've never had any trouble quieting down my thoughts, as long as I'm not in an immediately stressful situation.

But it's also never "changed" me in any way. It doesn't make me feel like there's "more to me", nor does it feel like it's some kind of desperately needed respite from my self-representation. I rather like the challenges of everyday life. Even if they're not "so important", it gives me meaning and purpose in a way that, well, I can't find any comparable meaning or purpose in focusing solely on present-experience.

So I guess my question is, am I missing some aspect of meditation? Am I misunderstanding something here? Because what I've been struggling to understand is why letting go of self-representation is seen as good or a goal. You're left with your sensory experience, but I don't understand what's meant to be so profound about that. It's never led me to any ethical realizations the way reading moral philosophy has, nor has it led me to any therapeutic realizations the way psychotherapy has -- nor do I really understand the mechanism by which it could. But I feel like I might be missing a piece of the puzzle?

I'll skip the standard religious answer to your question in terms of existential unsatisfactoriness - you can find that in the 1st chapter of any decent Buddhist book.

On the one hand, you could be someone whose mind is already fairly flexible, creative, open and not very compulsive, so you don't see much point in doing explicit work to make it even more like that. In which case, I'd say, just enjoy life and go with it!

The other possibility is that you could be (like many of us here probably) so deeply fused with your thinking mind that you have little experience or appreciation for the things consciousness can do beyond that.

Either way, maybe the point here is to remember that meditation is a tool among others, not a must or a panacea.

Do you sometimes feel a sense of awe? Exhilaration from music or some other source? Deep compassion for someone's misfortune? The thrill of riding a bike or some sense of flow from bodily exertion? The sense that time just stops in some special situations? The warm feeling of being part of something greater than you? A sense of mystery in life?

These are examples of things that most of us value when they happen, and yet they are neither happening at the level of the mental map (in the way that e.g moral philosophy is), nor reduced to bare sensory experience.

Deep meditation is about going deeply within yourself, and whatever you find along the way just becomes part of your journey of integration. There is no universal blueprint, bc the material you find yourself wrestling with is just whatever happens to have lodged itself in your unique psyche - traumas and all.

This should not be confused with the light meditation that has been popularized as "mindfulness" - that's a fairly safe technique that most everyone can probably benefit from having in their toolbox to help handle stress or bad times.

To the basic question "am I missing something", the only real answer is that if you feel curious, you can only know by giving it a try - thinking won't give you the info. If you were wondering about e.g learning to play the saxophone, you could get a pretty good idea whether it's worth your effort by listening to some on a cd. But this music is silent.

It takes at least 3 day immersive retreat, or (alternatively) a few months following e.g a weekly course with a bit of practice at home every day, to get a first feel for the space that meditation can open up, and decide whether you're interested in further exploring that.

"...you were taught in [Jesus]... to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." -- Ephesians 4:20-24

"[O]ur mind is trained to function this way in response to some stimuli" vs "our old self is corrupted through deceitful desires". The former sounds non-judgemental, but by saying that this realization should "lead you to develop new, more wholesome habits, in adequation with reality, which make you and others suffer less", it's implying that the previous habits were unwholesome (cf "corrupt"), not in adequation with reality (cf "deceitful") and made you and others suffer more.

I think insofar as psychotherapy is reluctant to discard bits of the "[old] self", the two perspectives would agree that it's a dead end.

I do have to say, personally I like the sound of having a "new self, created after the likeness of God" better than "realizing I'm just a bundle of habits, then replacing some habits with better ones." :-)

To me, the "new self vs old self" framing is just more abstract. You should do what works for you, but I think breaking down one's identity into a set of habits or responses is simply a higher resolution of the same.

Meditation helps me be with what is and remember that I’m ok.

Therapy helps me permanently untangle the thoughts and feelings that lead to distress in the first place.

They both complement each other and provide benefits that can’t be found in either alone. Meditation seems universally useful. Therapy somewhat less so, but still a powerful tool. If you’re not dealing with trauma, a good friend/mentor can provide the same feedback.

While I was meditating, this profound clarity came to me, it wasn't a case of a tyranny-like self-harming disclipinary action about my deliberate self deception, it was more like a great washing of positive emotion that framed exercise as "this is healthy for you, and it's only a few minutes a day and you can totally do it"

The textual description I gave does disservice to the actual feeling because my vocabulary is too poor to express it - but this wash-over of carity and positive emotion shifted my perspective and turned my relationship with exercise from this adversarial enemy to something more like our need for air or food - it's a healthy part of being an organic lifeform, and just like (good) food, it is pleasurable act of regeneration.

I think part of what holds people back is that meditation is like any other skill and practice is required, in this dopamine-hacked instant gratification society if there isn't instant results or even quick results people give up (I certainly did) -- I didn't start seeing the benefits of meditation until well after a month of practicing an hour every day, and up until then, it felt like a waste of time, which caused me to abort a few times before I forced the self discipline to stick with it.

Are there diminishing returns pas 15 minutes or 30 minutes etc?

I guess everyone is different, for me the practice was looking for guidance and then finding what works for me - one of the first things I had to let go was rigid time schedules, "THIS IS MY 15 MINUTE WINDOW FOR MEDIATETION LET ME SET AN ALARM SO I CAN GET BACK TO WORK" is not a very constructive attitute to regeneration and healing.

I suspect me saying above "Get results after more than a month" instead of hearing "I need to stick to this for a while" people hear "I will definitly get results in 1 month, here let me mark it on my calander [GET RESULTS HERE]" where it doesn't work like that. Maybe you need more healing than I did, maybe you need less. Maybe breathing is important because of how it intertwines with your exercise schedule (or lack thereof), or maybe you need silence or darkness. Maybe you need music. Maybe you need white noise.

The only common thread is that meditation is a personal journey, so listen to your body, try to avoid any preconcieved notions and expectations of results, timeframes and experiement with a few different things until you find what works for you...

After that point, it's up to my subconscious. I'll stop when I feel like it, when I feel satisfied. That could be anywhere from 10 more minutes to another hour. But the longest part is always the beginning. The second part never feels like time is passing - it's exactly what I want to be doing.

Of course, if I only have 15 minutes, there's no guarantee I'm going to reach a place of satisfaction. I would aim to set aside 30-45 minutes whenever possible. I often see "do X for 1 hour a day" and that's just not realistic for everyone. You can definitely get good results with less time investment. But in general, yes you'll get out of it what you put in. I don't walk every single day and I noticeably suffer for it.

I think mediation is more about getting rid of all beliefs temporarily.

Beliefs are just language playing around in the echo-chamber of your mind. Having too much noise in an echo-chamber can be distracting and stressful and can make you not hear what you should be hearing.

Meditation stops (or slows down) your thoughts. Then you realize you are just fine even if you don't repeat certain thoughts or variations of them in your brain.

Imagine you are a soldier. Enemy-attack is eminent. It can make you fearful. But that is only because you are imagining the different possible terrible effects of the enemy attack on you.

It is unlikely that all the bad things you imagine about will happen. But imagining them has a detrimental effect of your mind. Mediation helps counter that.

But you shouldn't stay in meditation forever you're supposed to come out of it so you can tackle the real life problems with a well rested mind which is better equipped to perceive the world as is, than a person in an echo-chamber would.

CBT and other psychotherapies challenge X or Y as false

So anything transient cannot be the self, hence is an illusion, or false.

But yes i also believe it's quite wrong ^^

A bit pedantic, and I could be wrong, but based on what I've read, my understanding is that Advaita (non-dualism) is not something you can practice, although there are practices in that school that can advance you on the path, like shravana, manana, nidhidyaasana.

It's more of a reasoning-, knowledge- and understanding-based system than anything else.

Jnana Yoga is the path.

Check out Swami Sarvapriyananda's talks on YouTube about Advaita.

Buddhism can deny self, but Buddha can also say, his self alone exists.

In any case, these are just beliefs. We know the world exists and there are no souls around. So much for "enlightenment".

Enlightenment is profound, and unrelated to belief, or non-belief about the existence of the world. Mainstream Buddhism does not deny the existence of the world or individual persons, it states that our conception of the "self" is a mental construct.

From a subjective perspective, everything we experience is mind-constructed, and in that context, there is no difference between self and world; everything we experience is mind. This is the essence of buddhist non-duality.

I would further add that we do not know anything about the existence of the world, only that we perceive the world indirectly based on sensory input, and most of us conclude that the world actually exists. There is a movement in science that calls this fundamental belief into question, you can checkout writings and interviews with Donald Hoffman.

"Hoffman notes that the commonly held view that brain activity causes conscious experience has, so far, proved to be intractable in terms of scientific explanation"

That's just a fringe position. It may look good on Youtube or a TED Talk. But it has no scientific backing. It is certainly not a "movement" in science. They produced no evidence or even proposed any experiments. It's just idle speculation, not science.

solipsism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

Interesting, after a certain point you get diminishing returns and once you've eliminated or solved the things conflicting you, then staying in a meditative state becomes an illusory trap to avoid life and living.

I knew a guy who did just that. Would spend hours meditating to the point where he avoided living. It seemed to be more like avoidance rather than being able to enjoy the gift of living without the troubles that come with it which meditation solves.

Just some random thoughts but there seems to be a reoccurring theme in life in which too much of a good thing is indeed too much. Life is about balance, all that meditating and no action does what exactly? What good is all that enlightenment if you aren't experiencing life or helping others?

I guess if the monks can live cheaply and not bother anyone, it's fine. It's not for me, though.

Most people wonder how the Dalai Lama can be so serene. I wonder how he can be so approachable.

I always found it odd you'd want to deprive yourself from excercising mind this way by medidating = practicing not thinking.

I believe it helped me a lot when programming and thinking about problems in general.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_the_brain_myth

Rest is part of exercise

Fully agree although a lot of devotees of Ramana Maharshi said they fell into silence just sitting in his presence. Improbable but it would be hilarious if scientists could make little "mouna wifi hubs" where practitioners got a silence handicap by sitting around it.

In the end though, I'm also skeptical that anything about self-inquiry can be replicated by an additive approach.

I generally find the followers to be quite suggestable by people they designated as a guru.

Related:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Brunton

I wanted to understand what is out there, especially outside of these apps and folks who pursue meditation seriously.

The “Waking Up” app has been a complete game changer. The core introductory course helped me get it for the first time, and the library of content and meditation approaches from various teachers in the app gives you a rabbit hole to explore as deeply as you want.

It’s been truly transformative, starting with the gradual realization that my thoughts are not me. If they were, who is aware of them? This isn’t just an idea, it’s something that I began to feel/understand directly, which then led to a lot less entanglement and rumination. This was just the beginning.

I definitely credit the approach in this app with making this make sense. Not affiliated, just a happy user.

I like and recommend Smiling Mind from a company out of Australia. It feels like what would happen if PBS released a version of Waking Up.

Ultimately, unrelenting inquiry came to: "I am."

I still have a lot of skepticism about the sensations that other meditators describe feeling, like jhanas and profound states of tranquility and whatnot. I have experienced deeper calmness and have made some insights about my brain (eg thoughts are like a sensor organ not unlike a constantly generating LLM), but I haven’t experienced anything like the sometimes superhuman claims that come from people in this community. Naval Ravikant has claimed he can experience psychedelic states just through meditation, Nick Cammarata at OpenAI makes claims about achieving perfect equanimity and being able to feel jhanas that are better than sex but also doesn’t feel desire for it because of aforementioned equanimity. There are many others on social media who make similar claims. From the outside, all of these people seem like normal humans, maybe calmer and wiser than usual, but who still seek material comfort and the validation of others just like anyone else does.

I wonder, what do others make of these superhuman meditation claims? How does one verify that their sensations during meditation are real reflections of how the brain works and not just increasingly subtle hallucinations? If you convinced everyone that the brain has a secret mechanism to feel perfect happiness, wouldn’t a lot of people hallucinate that they’ve experienced it even if it wasn’t real?

I don't think the things you're describing are particularly 'superhuman.' I definitely can achieve (if that's the right word -- it's almost certainly not -- how about 'experience') psychedelic states. Everything is kind of a psychedelic state if you look at it the right way. What is your personal experience with psychedelics? I wonder if you maybe haven't done them much you might not know how to spot it.

To me, clearly, the big question of superhuman meditation claims is the claim of some people to be enlightened. I personally think there is something to it, though I don't really know exactly what it is and I'd like to learn more about it.

BTW, my experience with meditation comes mostly from (controversial Wild Wild Country guru) Osho. Sounds like you're familiar with Buddhist traditions. There are a lot of ways to meditate.

But if everything is psychadelic then nothing is.

How do you describe the psychadelic states you achieve as being different from non-psychadelic states?

All the senior meditators I know have some element of irrationality. The openness that meditation seems to promote seems to also promote a certain level of gullibility that I did not expect from them.

Obviously, an out of body experience is not really true and is just a hallucination. People have looked at these.

A religious friend went on a road trip and hiked deep into the Rocky Mountains. They experienced the awe and wonder of the landscape, and to them, this was God revealing himself to them.

Supernatural claims by meditators are interpretations of the experience, much like God-in-the-mountains is an interpretation of experience.

I held the view you’re describing for many years until I spontaneously experienced what some meditators describe while I was practicing photography out in nature.

Learning to be a better photographer by immersing myself in the environment I was in had inadvertently led me to states of presence that meditators train to achieve. This is what ultimately made me explore meditation further.

I’d be cautious about linking that openness with what you’re framing as gullability. In my own exploration, I’ve applied rigorous rational examination as I go, and while I understand why people who are predisposed to religiosity reach supernatural conclusions, that is more about each individual’s existing beliefs and the resulting framing of the experience.

I agree with much of what you said. But I also think it makes people a tad more open to irrationality after such experiences, even the knowledgeable ones.

> that is more about each individual’s existing beliefs and the resulting framing of the experience

Not disagreeing.

Do you have some specific examples of irrationality? I’m curious to know what you’re encountering, and I haven’t yet found this among the non-religious meditators that I know.

I do avoid them (figuratively, not literally) because I value my critical thinking.

What I observe in meditators is a gradual loss of trust in logic, reason and science, even in those with decades of education. They fall for silly quackeries and psychic beliefs or that the meditation teacher mystically can know things and have insight beyond even experts.

If they produced some new knowledge through that, I would be all for it. But no, it just is a collapse of common sense.

This is again all very vague, so it’s difficult to understand your perspective. Silly quackeries like what?

It also doesn’t align with what I’ve experienced, or have observed in others: I’m still a staunch believer in logic, reason and science. Have never felt the need to take on psychic beliefs, etc.

I’m not saying you’re wrong about the people you’re referring to, I just don’t have a similar frame of reference.

The recent scientific interest in meditation is primarily focused on the mindfulness variety, which is more about observing your state of mind without judgement, and learning to stop getting lost in discursive thought, vs. TM's focus on mantras. (there are TM studies, but mindfulness has gotten wider attention, with good reason I think).

While the mindfulness family of practices has been well secularized, it does seem that TM brings a lot more baggage along with it.

I think this still boils down to the person practicing. While researching/evaluating meditation practices, TM was something that I decided to steer clear of, for many of the reasons you describe.

There are good reasons that so many people realize for themselves that non-dual perspectives hold more value than dualistic ones.

It’s nearly impossible to describe this in English well.

If you do a "5 Whys" type thing, there isn't really a reason to live. It's just an instinct. So I can say, I'm a hedonist, I live because life pays off eventually. No big deal.

I don't think rationality is opposed to anything like love or sentiment. I just like feeling good. Rationality is a tool I can use to feel more good, if I want.

Senior meditators spend vast amounts of time examining their personal reality, and learn that it isn't as neat and clean as we thought. That said, some do believe in outlandish things.

Jhana and nirodha sammapati are not irrational, they have been studied by scientists during the last several years. What is irrational are the belief systems built on top of those experiences by some buddhist traditions.

Out of body experiences can be had by any person who spends enough time meditating. The teachers I work with understand that it is not a supernatural experience.

All the more reason, to not take reason for granted.

> Senior meditators spend vast amounts of time examining their personal reality

They do, and my concern is they contribute no new insights, especially given the vast investments of time.

> Out of body experiences can be had by any person who spends enough time meditating

These are serious hallucinations and I am alarmed by how they are brushed aside. Most meditators think they are astral projecting. This is not examination or insight. This is delusional.

Do you dream at night? That is a hallucination. People can learn to be aware during dream states, this is called lucid dreaming. There is nothing delusional or dangerous about that, although the experience can be terrifying for people unfamiliar with the experience.

Out of body experiences are simply a special form of lucid dream, in which your imaginal / energy body seems to be located away from your physical body. There can be a sense of the imaginary body moving. This is just dreaming involving the proprioception sense.

The term "energy" can spook skeptics like yourself. The best explanations I have read is that it is just a mentally constructed sense of the body. Your brain right now has constructed an imaginary model of your body; this can also happen in dream states.

Your body is real, your mental map of the body is not. It is yet another form of hallucination which we all experience on a daily basis. Meditators will experience various forms of "energy" as their practice deepens, and this is also totally normal and not usually harmful.

Many of the explanations and mystical claims about energy and out of body experiences are questionable of course.

The mind is way more freaky and amazing than you realize, and labeling unusual states of consciousness as "delusional" is very limiting. It's your life...

Choosing to experience an out of the body experience or a lucid dream is fine. But believing that you are actually visiting or seeing a remote location is a delusion. Quite a few meditators think they are getting psychic powers with meditation, not just unusual states of consciousness. Look up siddhi.

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

0. https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf

Wallace develops his point after the story ". . . we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice."

0. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/francis-bacons-g...

These are called derealization hallucinations and are reported in meditators.

The "reality" that we experience is a predictive model of what we believe is about to happen. This is required because it takes a quite some time[1] for stimulus to be received and processed by our bodies! If we didn't have this predictive mechanism the universe would seem very strange indeed.

But but because we hallucinate our reality we get the illusion that what we experience is instantaneous in respect to the cause!

[1] depending on the circuit it can take >100 msec for a nerve signal to reach the brain, and that's not accounting for the subsequent processing

Kuijpers, Harold JH, et al. "Meditation-induced psychosis." Psychopathology 40.6 (2007): 461-464.

> stacking shit like rocks on top of each other

They still do in India. Cow dung cakes are a rural fuel.

I am not doubting that India is likely the first to write about derealization. But it was mistaken to be the ultimate reality.

And which European historian furnished you this tidbit?

I disagree that a focus on something other than logic is problematic, though. I'd actually argue that all-logic-all-the-time is a sickness.

I believe we are seeing the effects of this in many western countries.

Sam Harris is the polar opposite of religious, but is arguably one of the leading meditators/teachers in western culture right now. I’m as allergic to religion as someone can probably be, but I’ve gotten serious about meditation and have made it a central habit in my life, because I’ve found that it works.

The ultimate goal is to bring the “here-ness” of the present moment first experienced in meditation into ordinary waking moments as much as possible. Sitting is just a focused form of training that helps condition the mind and improve focus. When I discovered how impactful sitting was for me, it formed the motivation for deepening the practice. No religiosity here.

The non-religious/non-sectarian meditators are a rapidly growing group, and this is encouraging because the religious part was never necessary, and the perception that it is kept people like me from exploring this sooner.

From the book "God is Not One" by Stephen Prothero:

"Philosopher of religion Ninian Smart has referred to these [shared religious] tendencies as the seven “dimensions” of religion: the ritual, narrative, experiential, institutional, ethical, doctrinal, and material dimensions.

These family resemblances are just tendencies, however. Just as there are tall people in short families (none of the men in Michael Jordan’s family was over six feet tall), there are religions that deny the existence of God and religions that get along just fine without creeds. Something is a religion when it shares enough of this DNA to belong to the family of religions. What makes the members of this family different (and themselves) is how they mix and match these dimensions. Experience is central in Daoism and Buddhism. Hinduism and Judaism emphasize the narrative dimension. The ethical dimension is crucial in Confucianism. The Islamic and Yoruba traditions are to a great extent about ritual. And doctrine is particularly important to Christians.

The world’s religious rivals are clearly related, but they are more like second cousins than identical twins. They do not teach the same doctrines. They do not perform the same rituals. And they do not share the same goals."

The Christian dogmatic variety and its offshoots also happens to be quite popular. I understand the broader religious context after investing significant time and effort into trying to understand the phenomena of religion more generally. “The Evolution of God” is another interesting text in this category.

The narrow view I’m representing here is the view that I spent most of my life holding, and the view that most people I know still hold. It’s also the view that kept me from exploring Buddhism and meditation for many years. Religion had been a very destructive force in my life, and I’m not alone in this experience.

My point in this thread is that associating meditation with religion is unnecessary, and can be a problem for people who hold this narrow view. My attempts to expand my own understanding seems pretty rare in my social circles, and when I added a meditation practice as something very central to my life, it was clear that people around me hold all sorts of assumptions and misconceptions about it (as I did), and those associations don’t need to exist.

“Real Christianity” - following the things that Jesus actually taught - is actually a pretty decent way to go about life. But this isn’t what most people experience, and it colors their views of the whole endeavor accordingly.

It seems to me that both prayer and meditation are related to the notion of a Higher Power. Whether that power ranges from rebalancing the autonomic nervous system to letting God take charge, meditation and prayer are fundamentally about a conscious connection to the Unseen.

My stance comes from growing up in an extreme fundamentalist religious bubble. It set me up for a lifetime of unwinding unhealthy beliefs and patterns of thought, not the least of which was deep confusion about my self worth when hearing leaders of the church openly discuss stoning gay people as the truly appropriate consequence biblically. That kinda fucks with your head when you’re coming to terms with your own sexuality (I’m bisexual). I’ve seen first hand what these systems of belief do to families and communities, and while I’m not one to claim that all religion is awful, I do think it’s a bigger problem than help in the current social climate.

The ideas of most religions also set up a fundamental misconception about our relationship with the world/environment (that we’re separate from it) that is an existential threat to reaching some kind of environmental balance.

I’m curious what religious means to you.

I personally think human beings need some kind of central spiritual belief or identity to feel satisfied/happy/whole. I'm not sure, but in your case, it almost sounds like you might be getting that identity from REJECTING the shitty religious bubble you grew up in. Sounds like you feel like you're on a good track and moving somewhere with your life -- even if it's away from religion. So I guess in my book, you're religious.

>>I’ve seen first hand what these systems of belief do to families and communities, and while I’m not one to claim that all religion is awful, I do think it’s a bigger problem than help in the current social climate.

For me, this is really case-by-case, but my suspicion is that most religion is generally better for people than no religion -- so I suspect I disagree with you, but on limited data.

>>The ideas of most religions also set up a fundamental misconception about our relationship with the world/environment (that we’re separate from it) that is an existential threat to reaching some kind of environmental balance.

Hadn't heard this one before - huh. I think there are a lot of reasons we burn coal but IMO the fact that we're religious isn't one of the main ones. To me, religion is a great path toward loving others and the world such that we'd want to conserve them and it.

So while I understand the philosophical framing of religion in broader terms, In the context of meditation, I tend to avoid the religious connotation entirely because it’s overloaded and a lot of people immediately conflate the two.

To draw a crude comparison, people go to the gym religiously. But people aren’t likely to misinterpret that comment as meaning going to the gym is “Religious” in the sense that people understand religion in the cultural zeitgeist.

> Hadn't heard this one before - huh. I think there are a lot of reasons we burn coal but IMO the fact that we're religious isn't one of the main ones. To me, religion is a great path toward loving others and the world such that we'd want to conserve them and it.

Alan Watts explores this idea and I think it’s worth considering. Most people in the west - especially anyone raised around Judeo-Christian beliefs - are taught that they are born into this world, that they’re separate from it, that they’re here to have dominion over it, and that the real game is what comes after we die.

Even though I left the Christian belief system behind, I had deep unexamined beliefs that everything would be fine, because how could it not be? If all of this was created, and I was made, it implies that something bigger is in control. This is at the heart of climate denialism in all of the circles I grew up in.

The eastern framing is that we grow out of this world. We’re intrinsically part of it, an expression of it, and not separate. This brings a much different set of implications, and at least for me personally and based on what others have shared about their own experience, cultivating this view drastically altered my engagement with environmental issues, how I think about food, decisions I make about how I spend my time, etc.

The point isn’t that we burn coal because of religion, but that many popular religions instill a mindset that makes burning coal not a problem.

> To me, religion is a great path toward loving others and the world such that we'd want to conserve them and it.

I love that this is your view, and I wish that more people held it. Unfortunately I’ve been exposed to the toxic alternative almost exclusively, spread across about a dozen churches throughout my youth.

Moving beyond the message of love for a moment, I think religious organizations need to carefully examine the 2nd/3rd order effects of certain core beliefs.

“Don’t look up” seems like an example of the ultimate failure mode of instilling a sense of “God will take care of things” into the generation that has to contend with the fact that this is not true.

I should add that I say all of this while somewhat lamenting what has been lost in the breakdown of the church. A sense of community and belonging connected to a notion of something greater than oneself is sorely missing in modern society. I hope that better options emerge, or that major religious organizations can rehabilitate their image and mission effectively.

The difference is that people don’t conclude that one must become a religious person to become an athlete.

Describing training as religious evokes a definition of the word that has nothing to do with:

> 1. Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity.

> 2. Of, concerned with, or teaching religion.

Meditation is often (incorrectly) explicitly associated with religion and religiosity, which are orthogonal to a “religious” dedication to the practice, a practice that requires no adherence to religious ideas.

I’m only splitting hairs here because the idea that there’s a religious connection remains pretty prevalent, and is a major misconception.

This is the argument of quacks and charlatans (including the meditation charlatans aka "gurus").

A quack will always argue to ignore criticisms of his snake oil and just try it for yourself and find out.

Evidence is not personal, it's universal.

Denying universal facts and saying this is true for me is a position of a closed mind. You are being invited to prove facts, not just assert personal truths. It can't be more open minded than that.

Your attitude makes it inherently impossible to prove a non-materialistic position as you refuse to investigate for yourself. Far from strengthening your ability to find the truth you are simply closing your mind to other possibilities.

I know there are studies about the efficacy of meditation in certain scenarios, which is why I do it. But that falls short when you start claiming supernatural states of mind.

> Your attitude makes it inherently impossible to prove a non-materialistic position as you refuse to investigate for yourself

Personal attitude shouldn't be relevant when you're talking about evidence. One of the main attributes of evidence is precisely that it is objective and not personal.

It's like saying "I believe in X. I won't accept any evidence against X. Since Y is against X, Y doesn't exist"

This means you'd never realise X was wrong in the first place.

I'm open to accepting non-physical evidence if you can prove it exists. If you can, that would be very interesting, but it's likely that you can't. Again, anecdotes and tradition aren't evidence.

If you think testimonies are evidence, and are making appeals to antiquity/tradition, you just aren't thinking in an educated way. None of that is "evidence".

The fear many have about attempting such things mirrors the fear of e.g. psychedelic experiences -- the fear of "never coming back". Ironically, only living through this fear is what causes the bad trip in the first place. Egos, man, egos suck.

Where is the evidence for this? None.

> the fear of "never coming back"

Psychedelics sound like fun, but I have seen quite a few broken people on the streets, all because of them. It's not just fear, it is a serious concern.

Broken people on the streets are most often people with prior serious mental issues who were pushed over an edge. Typically by intense trauma (living on the street really fucking sucks for lots of reasons) but also to a lesser extent this can be drug-induced. However the drug class that usually performs this role is amphetamines ("meth psychosis"), not tryptamines or phenathylamines.

But you're clearly not willing to listen, so what use is there actually engaging here?

> I wonder, what do others make of these superhuman meditation claims?

Not much. I have no reason to be skeptical of their accounts, but they strike me as too personal to be relevant to others. Maybe it's similar to when people report the contents of their dreams, or describe something like synaesthesia. I notice that many mature practitioners do not make any such claims at all.

> How does one verify that their sensations during meditation are real reflections of how the brain works and not just increasingly subtle hallucinations?

What's the difference between "real reflections of how the brain works" and hallucinations? I'm not sure that it's actually necessary to reflect upon one's experience during meditation.

I sat for a 10 day goenka retreat and was shocked at how psychedelic the experience was for how little warning I was given.

Goenka is infamous in the serious meditation community, as they do not use qualified teachers in their retreats. The teaching is in the videos, the guides may not be able to help you if you start to freak out.

I would recommend people sit their first retreat at a more supportive and forgiving retreat center. The 10-day Goenka retreats seem to vary in quality and sometimes unnecessarily harsh from what I've read, I've not sat one personally. I don't like the idea of getting all instructions from video also, instead of all the great living teachers out there today.

I'd recommend IMS on the East Coast, and Spirit Rock on the West Coast. They have really great teachers and very supportive schedule and environment for beginners. Downside is it's more costly than a free retreat, but I found it to be very much worth it.

I guess the scientific method[0] should be the de-facto approach.

But one shouldn't necessarily expect to reach certainty: science is intrinsically humble, as it merely limits itself to the creation of models of reality, and to their refinement, by way of minimizing the error between theory & experimentation.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

I recently switched to a Chan method of facing outward and the hallucinations I experienced were extreme. At first, time felt as if it had completely stopped and what felt like days were going by as I sat there, the floor itself became liquid and water droplets were hitting it and I had a number of other pretty intense optical illusions. I was sitting perfectly still and my gaze was also almost still. I meditated for an hour and once it was over it suddenly felt like the entire experience didn't even happen and only a few minutes went by. But I felt amazing after I was finished.

Makyo is a common experience, but it was one monks had said to not be concerned with as it's just a hallucination. My experience going through that was ultimately unpleasant and not like the states you mentioned but it was immaterial to meditation itself.

I think that part of the purpose of meditation is to recognize a few things, such as your thoughts about the past and thoughts about the future are just like imagination (and a source of strife for people who are caught up in that imaginary world) and your thoughts are things you've consumed, much like your body was once food. So when one meditates you watch these thoughts arise and go by, you feel all sorts of sensations in the body come and go. I don't think the purpose, at least as I understand it, is to experience pleasure or find happiness. I guess if that happens it happens but it doesn't mean anything and is not something you should identify with.

I'm no monk so I'm not qualified to teach anything but I think ultimately part of the goal of meditation is to recognize some basic truths about who you are and about the nature of your existence through a careful and very simple method (just sitting), and that's all there is to it.

A clarifying question - are you saying the experience itself that you described was unpleasant, but that afterwards it felt amazing? Was it unpleasant due to the nature of the time dilation?

I would agree that the jhanas are hallucinations and initially not subtle whatsoever. By repeated exploration of the jhanas you learn that the states are wholly dependent on many things not under your control. Application of these states in real life is a whole different animal compared to simply being able to access them as well.

* Edit: If you do decide to dive in, the first jhana can be very disorienting. It's definitely a good idea seek help in integrating the experience. Feel free to message me, and I can help or at least point you in the right direction!

> If you convinced someone that the brain has a secret mechanism to feel perfect happiness, wouldn’t a lot of people hallucinate that they’ve experienced it even if it wasn’t real?

Your own experience is some proof against this — even after 10 years, you’re not claiming experiences you haven’t had, and aren’t hallucinating or imagining deeper states you’ve not reached. So even if some people are exaggerating, it’s not reasonable to think that everyone is.

And it would be _a lot_ of people. For thousands of years across many religious traditions humans have talked about reaching elevated states. Their experiences share common features. They teach others common techniques.

> From the outside, both of these people seem like normal humans, maybe calmer and wiser than usual, but who still seek material comfort and the validation of others just like anyone else does.

I think that’s an inevitable part of our condition — wanting to be warm and fed and in the company of those who love us. Even Buddha had disciples and friends. People like people. Sure, some folks live in a monastery or cave or ashram and use that social isolation as part of their practice and discipline. It doesn’t seem necessary for everyone.

> I haven’t experienced anything like the sometimes superhuman claims that come from people in this community.

Consider that meditation is only one part of the religious practice of (e.g.) Buddhism. There are millennia of teachings and traditions designed to prepare for meditation, to physically and mentally endure it, and to understand and process your experiences. Meditation without this set of traditions is a bit of an orphaned practice, a little like Catholics taking communion without going to church or praying or listening to sermons.

Meditation is a powerful practice and it can hurt. People with trauma, for instance, can have flashbacks or panic attacks brought on by it. Trauma is often deeply suppressed in the body, and meditation helps one connect better with the body, so of course it comes out unbidden.

Buddhist tradition distinguishes between the monk and the householder, between the person devoting their life to practice, and the person devoting their life to their family and job and community. It’s like living in the Shaolin temple and practicing kung fu 12 hours a day vs. going to the local dojo three hours a week. No harm in either one, and no judgement, but no surprise that people reach different places by being on different paths.

Another good resource is the book "Zen and the Brain".

And this interview with Daniel Ingram mentions some fascinating research on his own capacities developed in meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APOKB59pVpE

"Psychedelic experiences", superhuman, supernatural, crazy magic out-of-matrix stuff. Ya. It's real.

Then did concentration and vipassana.

These days just vipassana.

The thing with meditative pleasure is that it requires equanimity to appear, being content with almost nothing, which is perhaps why people do not become jhana junkies.

This is me now. Do you have any advice on what meditation to do?

I got started a few years ago when I saw the book "The Mind Illuminated" recommended here. There's a subreddit for it. (Fwiw, the author had a mini-scandal/non-scandal near the end of his life, which bothered a lot of people. You might look it up before getting too invested in the book.)

Many individuals that started out in "The Mind Illuminated" subreddit seem to have since shifted over to https://midlmeditation.com/ It also has a subreddit.

Both resources have step-by-step guides for absolute beginners. They both present Buddhist meditation practices, with varying degrees of Buddhist spirituality mixed in.

I was all ready to criticize this, but the article pretty much sums up my feelings:

> Critics call it “McMindfulness,” a capitalist perversion of meditation that deals with stress by focusing inward on the breath, rather than outward on the social structures that cause so much of that stress.

I'm all for finding ways for people to improve their mental health and become more resilient to their suffering. But I can't help but feel the recent societal interest in meditation and psychedelics is wrongheaded in that it's treating a symptom rather than a cause.

There's also a part of me that resists the "capitalization" of these tools for mental introspection. It feels, in some way, to be missing the point. That said, I'm not sure that resistance is correctly targeted. Why shouldn't someone be able to make money by providing people with tools to improve their lives? Is that thought a silly purity spiral, leaving scraps of potential well-being on the table just because the packaging is too slick?

But still, there's something about it that feels off to me, as though there's something that's lost when we package all this ancient, hard-won wisdom into a smartphone app whose notifications to you will sit right next to the latest Elon Musk tweet.

I agree, but the question emerges "what is treatable?" Many of the thousands of causes of stress in modern life can't be changed by an individual: I can't unelect politicians I disagree with, clean up the air where I live, or make the roads I travel significantly less clogged with traffic. But I can change my reactions to these. Thich Nhat Hanh taught people 'to consider every red traffic light a Bodhisattva, teaching us to "stop and be here now"'. An individual can treat SOME causes: Disconnect from Twitter and nightly TV news, and if that's what you mean, I agree with you even more strongly. But for larger realities, "the social structures that cause so much of the stress", no immediate solutions are available to the individual. Stress reduction is a good way to go.

The counterpoint is essentially that if people engaged in social outward-looking collective action, as opposed to solitary inward-looking meditation, then you can change the world -- as has been demonstrated countless times.

You certainly can unelect politicians in the next election. Environmental movements have made gigantic progress towards cleaning up the air. And congestion pricing is starting to spread as the solution for cities to reduce traffic, and it works.

As an individual you probably won't be the single tipping point. But collective action happens because lots of individuals work together, and it requires all of those individuals. But it requires more than changing your reactions, it requires collective action.

Yes, it has been demonstrated, and yes it requires collective action, but no that doesn't mean I (necessarily) have the time, energy or skill to act effectively to change any one, let alone dozens or thousands of these stressors, even if they're enormously stressful to me currently. The 'bang for the buck' in my world is to address the stressors at the personal level, and hope/intend to contribute to some worthy cause as well.

Why do these two actions contradict each other? People can do both. Gandhi was not only a community organizer who affected broad, collective action but also practiced meditation.

If you're angry and want to change the world, stress and frivolous thoughts aren't going to interfere. If anything, your focus on the cause isn't going to leave room for as many frivolous thoughts.

Unfortunately this is not literally true in that an election puts a different politician in the place of the former one. This is how most democracies are inconsistent and don’t allow people to choose anarchy.

I totally agree, I think the thing I find discomforting is the apparent conflict between the systems that exacerbate the "problem" and the fact that a meditation app, medicalized psychedelic trip, or scientific research into either seems somehow part of that system. It feels like instead of becoming tools for liberation from daily suffering or for deepening the understanding of one's consciousness, these tools are being subsumed and defanged by the same system that makes us need them.

It's some of the same feeling as seeing businesses embrace social justice culture - without even getting into the whole "woke" debate, I'll just say it often feels weird to see these big machines of capitalism embrace these causes. It feels cynical - rather than "this is a good cause, we will support it" it feels like "people are into social justice, this is good marketing".

But again, maybe that's OK. If Disney embraces LGBT causes for cynical reasons to sell movies, but instrumentally advances rights or attitudes in doing so - or if Headspace makes a ton of money, but genuinely improves someone's internal experience - or if Joe Rogan convinces someone to try psychedelic therapy, and that person is able to work through some issues and be better for their family - it's hard to find an argument that these are bad things.

But they still make me feel weird.

I personally think it's about the world becoming more and more uncertain. Everybody is supposed to switch careers a bunch of times during lifetime, everybody is expected to push their limits, everybody is expected to stay on top ever changing social norms.

It's just too much pressure. There is very little average Joe can do to have a fairly sure good living. While the system has a lot of opportunities for talented people, just getting by on working hard, being punctual, trustworthy and such, is increasingly hard.

As lord Vetinari says, people mostly don't want tomorrow to be better - they want it to be the same. It's more and more unlikely nowadays.