[bowsamic]

My biggest advice for anyone is to not ignore the traditional advice. Secular meditation practises based on Buddhist meditation take the practise out of its context in a quick and forceful way. Buddhism has had 2500 years to slowly develop and work out what works and what does not. It is quite dangerous to take it and call the parts that do not immediately appeal to the secular western mind, like devotion, worship, compassion, traditional forms & rituals, and cast them away. I personally know two people who went into severe psychosis and depression by trying to practise meditation in a secular context. Something about meditation attracts people that think they fully understand something before they’ve even tried it. This will get torn down by the practise, and if you do not have support in place, this quickly can result in extreme mental health problems. I always say that the effects of meditation can be like the head space of an lsd trip except you don’t come down. It’s hard to “unsee”, and a lot of this religious “backwards” Buddhist worldview and practise exists specifically to integrate these experiences

[taeric]

I don't know. This still feels heavy in the propaganda realm. Which... to be clear, propaganda works. Turns out, telling people directly how and what to feel is more effective than makes sense.

That is, looking at it as 2500 years of successfully developing what works is hiding a lot of the failure that has accompanied things in that same time span. Is akin to saying that the religions that avoid certain foods are on to something, because no way something like that would stick without a solid reason.

To that end, the folks you know that had a mental breakdown. Is there a counterfactual world where they did not have a breakdown by avoiding meditation? Or by picking it up with a new religion? My priors are low that that is the case, but I would be delighted to learn more.

[bowsamic]

It’s very new to us, why would we assume we have a perfect system for understanding it? It isn’t a toy to play with. Far more scientific research is needed before it’s safe to do in a secular context.

[taeric]

Isn't this true of all frames? I feel that I could claim the same for science and religion as things, as well.

Note that I'm fine pushing for caution on folks wanting to take up any practice. This would go as well for folks that think a running practice will help them. Maybe. At best.

[bowsamic]

I think we should treat it like a psychedelic treatment

[taeric]

In what way?

[bowsamic]

It should be done only under a very experienced guide

[Hasu]

I've been noticing an increasing trend of people saying things like this, and I don't get it. Meditation has many forms and traditions, within and without Buddhism. Which ones are "safe" and which ones aren't? Is using Headspace twice a week enough to be dangerous, or is there some lower bound where meditation practice without Buddhist beliefs switches from harmless to dangerous? And are Hindu or Christian meditation practices dangerous, or just the secular stuff? What precisely is the nature of this danger?

> I personally know two people who went into severe psychosis and depression by trying to practise meditation in a secular context.

Sorry, but I simply can't believe this. I mean I believe you have two friends with mental health issues, but I don't believe that psychosis can be triggered in a normal person by practicing "secular meditation". That's an extreme claim that requires a lot of evidence.

[stryan]

> And are Hindu or Christian meditation practices dangerous, or just the secular stuff? What precisely is the nature of this danger?

I don't think the argument is usually "meditation without Buddhism is dangerous" but rather "meditation techniques taken from their context can be dangerous". Regular mindfulness or insight meditation can cause shifts in mental state that a person isn't used to and they may not have the tools required to deal with it in a healthy manner.

It's like the mental equivalent of a normal person suddenly starting the same workout routine as an professional athlete, or even just an experienced weightlifter. They might be able to do the exercises, but they don't have the context provided by having a coach/being in the sport/etc to provide them with tools like "how to fall properly" or "knowing a torn muscle versus a normal sprain". That doesn't mean that doing the exercises in general are bad or that you need to do sport foo in order to exercise.

[Enginerrrd]

>That's an extreme claim that requires a lot of evidence.

For what it's worth, I Don't think it's an extreme claim at all.

The potential for ill-effects from more extreme efforts in Meditation is starting to be documented by western scientists. A lot of adverse outcomes aren't only possible, but actually quite common.

I personally had ZERO prior mental health issues, but after 3-4 months of meditating 30-90 minutes everyday in addition to fairly intense mindfulness practice throughout the day, I started to experience a lot of issues: strange emotional outbursts disconnected from any memory or thought, anger management issues, tension headaches, depression, etc.

These ultimately only resolved by stopping meditation entirely for a long time and only carefully reintroducing it in smaller less frequent doses.

It's really not all sunshine and rainbows.

[titanomachy]

I think this stuff is actually pretty typical for folks who progress to a certain stage. I experienced it as well, if that makes you feel any better.

The Buddhists definitely know about this, but a lot of their writing is pretty impenetrable and interlaced with weird metaphysics. Here's some modern, secular words on the subject (from the admittedly controversial author Daniel Ingram):

https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight...

Here's a more traditional buddhist description of the same thing:

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/progress....

I think a very small fraction of people actually meditate enough to get to that point. Meditating 90 minutes a day (plus the constant mindfulness practice) is pretty extreme by most people's standards (at least in US secular culture).

[Enginerrrd]

Yeah, it came as a real shock to me at first. I had made many mistakes in my early meditation career. But I learned a lot more and suddenly started progressing. This was wonderful at first. I started to feel and experience some pretty mind-blowing things on the cushion at first and then extending well off the cushion into the rest of my life. Then... I remember random memories started to kind of pop into my awareness. I started to see a bright light shining through my eyes/head while I was on the cushion. This was accompanied by these almost divine feelings of bliss and content, which sometimes extended for hours after my sit. This was very cool at first. Then... this weird head pressure and uncomfortable feeling between my eyes started showing up. My single pointed focus was impossible to maintain because the intense feeling of pressure between my eyes or on the crown of my head would grow more and more distracting as I tried to regain the single pointed focus I had been enjoying. Then... shortly after that, the pressure turned into full tension headaches that lasted all day on bad days. Then... I was working in my office at home one day and my vision suddenly became blurry. Then, I started to feel nauseous. I went to throw up, I could feel the usual feelings of vomiting coming up from my abdomen, then up my throat, then... when it reached my mouth/face, instead of vomit this wave of intense sadness reached my face and it contorted into an expression of anguish. For the next like 30 minutes, wave after wave of this sadness, in every nuanced flavor I'd ever experienced started coming up, taking over my face, then passing. Then the rage. So much anger and rage and betrayel and hurt came and did the same thing. Wave after wave. I had NO idea WTF was happening to me, but I'd always been an absolute pinnacle of mental stability so this was very unusual. I didn't know what else to do but to let it pass.

After that, for months, the head pressure / headaches would reappear and then they'd be relieved by me crying. Feeling the intense feelings and going away.

But... I really wasn't expecting any of that. I just wanted to be able to focus better and think more clearly. I didn't sign up for THIS. So I just let it go and fade. I didn't really want to accidentally screw my brain up. So, unfortunately, I haven't started a daily practice again since. It all did feel pretty cathartic though.

I've dabbled here and there with meditating again. When I do it with any real regularity though, the head pressure tends to come back.

[frostwarrior]

Those are the kind of things that make me stay away from deeper forms of meditation and mindfulness.

Also, I'm not very fond of taking the traditional advice so literally. These sources focus solely on training new Buddhist monks, and most people doing secular practice just want some peace of mind while they continue their, productivity focused, western lifestyle.

We need to take these sources with a grain of salt and reorient our practice so that it cultivates more peace of mind without making us implode when the cultivated buddhist mindset creates a conflict with our western lifestyle

[bowsamic]

There aren’t Buddhist meditation practises that have no risk of causing this. Any meditation practise that involves mindfulness and concentration done for more than 15 or 20 mins a day carries this risk

I agree that the goals of Buddhism contradict the goals we have in western society though. That said, Steve Jobs was a devout Zen Buddhist, so he sat many thousands of hours of zazen

I do find it funny though when companies train their employees in mindfulness. It’s almost like they want workers who have less emotional connection with their work. As I said elsewhere, it’s all a matter of whether you follow the instructions. If you do, it will have adverse effects.

[titanomachy]

Wow, thanks for sharing. I have no advice to offer but maybe an experienced teacher could help.

I've experienced intense emotional swings like you describe but not the pain or pressure. The emotional swings at least were something I was able to get through, eventually. They were strong for a while but stopped with continued practice. I'm definitely still more sensitive than I was before. I feel both positive and negative feelings more intensely, but hold onto them less.

[bowsamic]

Yep, I've heard of multiple people with these exact symptoms. It's a very familiar story

[Enginerrrd]

Yes, I'm very secular. But the fact that these things happen with such regularity and there is remarkable consistency and precision in them really lends itself toward the religious interpretations. Also, the skeptic in me says it's unreliable, but those glimpses of actual visual light (flickering at first, then steady) coupled with feelings of (for lack of a better word) divinity, are still hard for me to reconcile with a purely secular interpretation.

One big takeaway I had was realizing that outside the west, these types of things are well known. Here though, it seems almost no one who purports to be a "teacher" knows much about them or what to do with them.

[bowsamic]

> The Buddhists definitely know about this, but a lot of their writing is pretty impenetrable and interlaced with weird metaphysics. Here's some modern, secular words on the subject:

This and linking MCTB (of all things) are the exact dangerous taking out of context I’m warning against. Daniel Ingram is a terrible resource, he should not be recommended

[titanomachy]

You seem pretty experienced in this stuff. I agree with a lot of what you're saying in this thread: meditation can be dangerous and should be taken more seriously. Treating it as on par with a psychedelic therapy sounds about right.

Here's where I think we differ: a lot of people in secular western culture are intensely put off by all the religious stuff that comes with Buddhism. The metaphysics and reincarnation stuff is, in my view, a reflection of the culture that Siddhartha Gautama grew up in and taught in, rather than a necessary part of eliminating suffering. I think that retelling these lessons in a way that's accessible to modern audiences is important. Some people simply will not accept something taught in the form of ancient mysticism. Should those people be denied insight just because they didn't grow up in India during the Iron Age?

I get that Ingram is polarizing. I'll add a link to Mahasi Sayadaw as well, but I just don't think he explains things in a way that's as clear to someone with my cultural background.

[bowsamic]

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

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

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

[bstrom]

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

[bowsamic]

One reason is that he broke a major taboo in publicly declaring himself an Arhat

Then he has this book that is supposed to distil all of the powerful insight practises into a secular path, but everyone I’ve spoken to in his pragmatic dharma community is extremely toxic. It’s literally like the 4chan of Buddhism, huge amounts of racism, lots of depressed teens, very online, lots of people who think they are enlightened (one of which suddenly “rated my capacity for awakening” as zero, and when I said I didn’t care flew into a rage)

It’s exactly what you expect to happen when you take Buddhism, try and condense it down into a path for having the strongest and most intense experience, and market it to terminally online young adult men

Ingram was also heavily involved in this “fire kasina” stuff where you just stare at a flame for days until you start seeing things and go kind of crazy, which is a controversial practise in Buddhism

Finally he’s just not a qualified Buddhist teacher

[bowsamic]

I also had some of those side effects. I also had a trippy period, where I struggled to see anything as real. It was about a 2 week long solipsistic nightmare. I do think this is all “part of the path”, but without the traditional context, you will be quite lost on what to do next. Even with it, it’s very difficult

[bowsamic]

I would say that meditating for more than 15 minutes a day is very dangerous

I’m sorry that you don’t believe (edit typo) me, nothing I can do about that

[bowsamic]

I would say it’s an increasing trend because people who are more invested in the traditions have “had enough” of so called “mcmindfulness” or dangerous approaches

[Hasu]

If what you say is true, then it should be trivially easy to find an app that promotes these dangerous practices, find their daily active users, then check the reviews and find a high percentage (>10%) of negative reviews saying something like, "1/5, cannot recommend, after using this app every day for three months, I'm now experiencing horrible mental health issues".

There are plenty of apps out there with millions of daily active users. What percentage of those users do you expect to suffer negative mental health side effects? Where is the evidence that they exist at all?

[bowsamic]

I don’t have access to that data. Do you?

I would guess that about 5 to 10% of people who seriously try the practise for an extended period experience very scary and potentially trauma inducing effects

[Hasu]

I can use Google, and found this [1] article claiming over 4 million DAUs for Calm in June of 2020, with trendlines going up and to the right.

So the lower bound of your estimate gives us ~200,000 people who would be adversely affected. Looking through negative reviews, it's all complaints about pricing and paywalls. The same is true for Headspace, the second biggest app in this space (I don't have DAUs for them, but it's got about half as many downloads and reviews, so let's assume less than half as big).

I can't find a single complaint about adverse mental health effects, which doesn't mean it never happens, but it's not anywhere close to 5%.

[1] https://blog.apptopia.com/calm-app-outperforms-headspace-dur...

[bowsamic]

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

[vorpalhex]

You're assuming the people having issues realize Calm is the source. Also a DAU is not always someone meditating.

[sabellito]

I'm going to call bs on your claim that you "personally know two people who went into severe psychosis and depression".

Since we're in "my personal experience"-land, I've been meditating and have been around people who meditate daily for 26 years. Never seen or heard about anything close to what you describe.

[vorpalhex]

Out of a study of about a thousand people who were asked to start a daily meditation process (with weekly check-ins), about 20% reported at least one negative episode.

Now, that included everything from "feeling sad" to full blown panic attack.

I'll see if I can dig up that particular study. Here is a similar one which tracked longterm meditators:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1428622/

> However, of the twenty-seven subjects, seventeen (62.9%) reported at least one adverse effect, and two (7.4%) suffered profound adverse effects.

[selykg]

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

[vorpalhex]

There are quite a few studies here though.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5584749/ (online survey, 84 respondants)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32820538/ (meta analysis, 6703 total participants across 55 studies)

My reading of this is we can't make claims like X% practicioners have negative outcomes - the numbers are too messy. We can definitely say a significant amount of practictioners do have negative outcomes.

But, those negative outcomes are wide and while they include suicide, depression and panic attacks, the majority of them are things like anxiety.

You are digging into and tinkering with your psyche. Of course there are going to be negative outcomes. I would be more skeptical if the claim was meditation did something and never had negative effects.

[taeric]

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

[vorpalhex]

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

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

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

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

[bowsamic]

It’s more like claiming that weed causes forgetfulness

[bowsamic]

I think we should generally be risk averse when the stakes are high. Telling someone to meditate is like telling them to trip, but without them even realising it is a trip, building up over time. It is quite dangerous. I mentioned those two people who had issues but I have others, maybe four or five, who are unsure if they would have embarked on this experience if they knew

[titanomachy]

I believe it, I personally experienced something like a psychotic episode while on a meditation retreat. Also a panic attack, a few hours before that. No prior history of panic attacks or psychosis.

I actually think that some of the benefits of meditation are adjacent to psychosis, in a way: as you get closer to the "insight" that is the intended result of Buddhist meditation, you are also flirting with losing your grip on reality.

In my case, it went fine. I resolved the experience and integrated it. But I could see how it might go the other way for some.

Professor Britton at Brown has made a career of studying these kinds of experiences, plenty of examples here:

https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/britton/research/varieti...

[bowsamic]

Yes really the whole point of it is to let go of your grip on reality

[titanomachy]

Yeah, I'm not sure what the difference is between the people who come away from the experienced more "enlightened" vs just more insane.

It kind of feels like an all-or-nothing thing: once you start to "see through the illusion of self", you have to follow that through to its logical conclusion or you'll be stuck living with intense cognitive dissonance.

I don't generally like to talk about this stuff too much because it sounds absolutely nuts to people who haven't experienced it.

[bowsamic]

The difference is that insane people don’t focus on compassion towards all beings

[bowsamic]

This was specifically a group who practise based on Daniel Ingrams book MTCB, which is largely imo based on generating intense insight experiences as quickly as possible. Perhaps you did not have experience with such people

[bitcurious]

On the other hand, be careful - meditation in the context of Buddhism is a marketing funnel backed by 2500 years of experience. It systematically breaks down your value system and replaces it with one that puts Buddhist practice at the core. So if you’re not looking for a religious awakening don’t take any of their advice too seriously.

[bowsamic]

Yes, it will break down your values. Unfortunately if you have the taste of bodhicitta: the mind that wants to awaken and liberate yourself and others from suffering, then you will mostly be forced to do it. I don’t recommend meditation or Buddhism for all, it will change your life in many ways that you will consider bad from your current point of view. Less motivation for tackling stressful tasks, less romantic attachment, less hunger for new experiences, often an increased neurosis, etc.

EDIT: I find it quite horrifying that doctors prescribe it now. If you follow the doctors advice, mindfulness meditation every day, properly, then the doctor does not understand where that will take you. It is not a known thing for them. It only is “safe” because most people don’t actually bother doing it regularly or put effort in

[d82nsjk9]

> Less motivation for tackling stressful tasks, less romantic attachment, less hunger for new experiences, often an increased neurosis, etc.

Bold statement that piqued my interest. Do you have backing sources or pointers to this topic?

[bowsamic]

Hmm not really, just the general side effects that cause people to go deeper into the practise. I saw a study that said that meditation can increase selfishness or neurosis, but other than that I only have anecdotal evidence. The whole thing is about realising your attachments are fake, and that so is your perception of the world, and realising that on a deep level. Obviously priorities will shift due to this

[feanaro]

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

[bowsamic]

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

[feanaro]

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

[bowsamic]

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

[lpcrealmadrid]

Author here. This is so spot on. I spent years avoiding the traditional practices/concepts because of a desire to be Someone Special (spiritual materialism). Burning that desire is probably one of the more profound early experiences of formal practice I’ve had with a teacher and a community. Wish I had the humility to avoid those 10 wandering years.

[bowsamic]

Those 10 wandering years led you here, and you’ll have many millions more of them

[xyproto]

Why are you so sure he'll have many millions more years?

[bowsamic]

Because our practise is very long

[roody15]

Disclaimer: This is probably going to make me sound crazy but perhaps it’s fitting.

In a deeply meditative state you can open up yourself to a spiritual state of perception. In this transcendental state you can attract other spiritual and ethereal entities. Not all of which are benevolent.

Lots of the meditative mantras, prayers and rituals perhaps are meant to ward off negative entities and even perhaps attract compassionate and positive spiritual forces

In a sense train yourself to open the door to different states of mind … this and of itself doesn’t equal enlightenment or happiness.

[bowsamic]

Yes, in the realm of emptiness (which we are never apart from) we can directly touch Buddhas and bodhisattvas, since we are never separate from them anyway. Buddhist practise helps us see this directly

[vorpalhex]

Do you view this description as being literal or metaphorical?

[bowsamic]

It’s literal, else they would have said it’s not

[drieddust]

Absolutely meditation is just one part of 8 part Hindu Yoga system objective of which is to be one with the ultimate reality and live a good life no matter what. Person grown with strong Abrahmic values with find it confusing any strange.

After reading Bhagwad Geeta I realised that yoga/meditation is all about discharging your duties with no expectations. I won't say I am transformed but my life do change for good by a huge margin after realising this.

[greenglass]

The people who have popularized meditation in the west, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzburg, Joseph Goldstein, zinn, all come at it from the Buddhist tradition.

It’s a useful approach for treating various medical problems. Anything, even nothing, can cause psychosis.

[bowsamic]

This is minimising the risks, and those people you mention, while being from traditional backgrounds, afaik do not teach traditional practises, so they have effectively removed the wider framework

Meditation is not “as safe as sitting down”. It has strong life altering risks

[greenglass]

For those dealing with chronic pain, insomnia and other debilitating conditions, these people offer a lot that cannot be achieved through other means. Opiates or benzodiazepines are more readily available, and preferred by mainstream medicine, but they too can alter one’s life. Anything can alter one’s life if you think about it.

[taylodl]

I would argue Zen Buddhism is secular, so I'm not quite sure the distinction you're trying to make.

[bowsamic]

Zen Buddhism is not secular at all. It is a traditional form of Mahayana Buddhism. In China and Vietnam Zen Buddhists practise Pure Land extensively. Dogen in Japan, the creator of Soto Zen, was heavily invested in the Lotus sutra and mentioned rebirth constantly. Where did you learn that it is secular? This is not true