[mohave529]

"Along a less-traveled route, meditation remains what it long was: a deeply transformative pursuit, a devoted metamorphosis of the mind toward increasingly enlightened states."

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.

[crazygringo]

Could you give an example of beliefs/ideas you've let go of, or discovered can't be known to be true?

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.

[cracoucax]

Psychotherapy works on the "self": your problems, your history.

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).

[downsplat]

> One of the aims of mediation is to gradually understand that this self is really an illusion

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.

[crazygringo]

That seems like a fantastic explanation -- can I ask a couple of questions, since you seem to be able to explain so well?

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?

[downsplat]

Thanks for your kind words :) Now I really need to answer something, and it's not so easy based on the info you give.

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.

[gwd]

Similarities and differences in perspective:

"...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." :-)

[digging]

> 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.

[Jimpulse]

Meditation and therapy aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, for people who have traumas, I would say both are necessary. Very few meditation teachers are trained in handling a psychological crisis and mental break downs happen often in retreats and self-led practice.

[haswell]

This very much aligns with my experience.

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.

[BarryMilo]

To be clear, there are many types of meditation, each with its own goal (or none at all). Some of them are "merely" relaxation exercises, but that is also something that is very much needed in today's world.

[malux85]

For me, it was about confronting deliberate self deception. In my mind I always told myself that "I dont have time to exercise", when the truth was, I was too lazy to exercise.

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.

[WXLCKNO]

An hour day seems like a high threshold (I'm not saying it is, just my perception).

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

[malux85]

It takes me 15-20 minutes just to switch my mind from "alert problem solving" mode to meditative state in sync with body - and get my breathing right.

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...

[digging]

I don't meditate, but I do introspect a lot. I often do so on walks. And I find I must give myself at least 10-15 minutes to even get into that mode, to stop worrying about what's actually happening or about to happen or did happen and to be able to let my mind wander and explore things deeply. So I force myself to continue until I reach the point where I'm no longer trying to convince myself to give it up and go home because there's something else I want to do so badly.

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.

[galaxyLogic]

> trying to understand the pros/cons of psychotherapy vs meditation, as both of them seem to involve letting go of false beliefs.

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.

[curo]

Ramana Maharshi says anything transient is false

CBT and other psychotherapies challenge X or Y as false

[jules22]

There is no reason why he should be taken as an authority. "anything transient is false" is wrong at so many levels.

[cracoucax]

I believe since Maharshi was a practitioner of hinduism for him "the self" (what they call Atman) was to be seen in all things, and the same everywhere.

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

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

[kagakuninja]

He practiced Advaita vedanta. When exploring the non-duality of self vs world, there are fundamentally 2 approaches. Advaita Vedanta denies the existence of the world, only the (true) self is real. Buddhism denies the existence of the self.

[vram22]

"He practiced Advaita vedanta."

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.

[jules22]

I thought Advaita denies only the duality between the soul and the world soul, while denial of the world is more of solipcism.

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".

[chrispine]

Not disagreeing, but it's also correct on some levels.

[freitzkriesler2]

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

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.

[beardedmoose]

Interesting take. With this line of thinking would Buddhist monks just be practicing excessive escapism much like those who turn to drugs and alcohol?

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?

[ReactiveJelly]

Usually drug and alcohol addiction ends up hurting other people and being a drain on social safety nets, right?

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

[freitzkriesler2]

Maybe but not always. Some of those Buddhist monks still enjoy a few earthly pleasures albeit at levels that appear quite modest to us.

[hinkley]

Turns out a lot of humans bond over mutually shared grasping, so it can make you 'not fun at parties' when they're harrumphing about things that Do. Not. Matter. and are put off by you not dog-piling.

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

[asdfman123]

It sounds like you may be dealing with growing pains: moving on from old relationships and social scenes you've matured past.

[hinkley]

Can’t pick my family, neighbors or colleagues. Can’t control my friends’ friends, or people who I share hobbies with. They are who they are and I can deal with them or isolate.

[oldstrangers]

I've always sort of intuitively done this since I was a kid (https://zchry.org/words/questioning-my-quantum-leap-an-ongoi...). I have zero experience with meditation in the traditional sense but I'm really interested in going down that path next as I try to broaden my scope.

[johndhi]

I used to play a game as a kid where I'd close my eyes and try not to see or imagine anything. To keep a black empty universe as the only thing I see, for as long as possible. It isn't easy!

[iamatworknow]

I did the same as a kid. Like if I was in a classroom with noisy classmates ("study hall") I'd shut my eyes and actively try to not hear them and embrace the nothingness "around" the voices. Kinda interesting that I have distinct memories of doing this _years_ before I was ever exposed to "meditation".

[johndhi]

IMO a lot of stuff humans have 'invented' (like meditation) are really just sort of tied to our nature as animals. I think meditation is something we're all (most?) inclined to try in some way, but then some specific geeks studied it really hard for thousands of years and turned it into what it is.

[iamatworknow]

Yeah, that totally makes sense to me.

[oldstrangers]

I have a similar thought experiment where I try to imagine the true essence of 'nothingness', down to even the removal of the 'idea' of nothingness and even the thought that I'm trying to imagine something. It's a weird feeling.

[johndhi]

I do that too!

[mirekrusin]

I did something similar but always tried to imagine things - shapes like cube, rotate it, move it around, slice it etc. - not easy.

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.

[codr7]

If that's what 10% of your brain is capable of, imagine what kinds of miracles are possible once you tap into the rest of it.

[CyberDildonics]

What you're saying is a myth that gets repeated like an old wives tale by people who never check it out.

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

[codr7]

Oh, but I did check it out, spent 9 months doing nothing but yoga and meditation out in the forest; and there's definitely more in there just waiting to be activated.

[mirekrusin]

If you use 1% of your brain imagine what would happen if you’d use all of it.

[ReactiveJelly]

> odd you'd want to deprive yourself from excercising mind

Rest is part of exercise

[mirekrusin]

Sleep is good for rest.

[mk67]

Very easy for me, never managed to see or imagine anything when I closed my eyes. It's always black no matter how hard I try.

[dlivingston]

A bit tangential, but I absolutely love your blog design. Minimalistic, yet very aesthetic and unique.

[oldstrangers]

Thank you!

[curo]

> the pursuit of "states" can be a trap in of itself

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.

[jules22]

There are a bunch of psychology phenomena that explain such things. No Wifi involved.

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

[krzat]

Can you give some examples of your false beliefs?

[vram22]

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

Related:

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

[downsplat]

For resources about Ramana Maharshi, sure, Paul Brunton was popular, but I'd first go with Arthur Osborne and/or David Godman. David has a metric ton of videos on youtube if you prefer listening to reading.

[borg16]

can you provide some resources to understand this "advanced" meditation? my attempts with calm/headspace etc always stop at the same theme of 'concentrate on breathing, distractions are fine'.

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

[haswell]

I’ve tried Calm and Headspace, and they never really worked for me.

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.

[chrispine]

Strong +1 for the Waking Up app. (I also ready the Waking Up book, and found it to be quite hit-or-miss for me. But the app is just wonderful.)

[eep_social]

Based on these recommendations I tried it out. Content seems fine but in 2023 it’s hard to escape the connection between Sam Harris and so-called “effective altruism” which soured the experience in for me.

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.

[kagakuninja]

I would suggest reading the book The Mind Illuminated.

[patrickscoleman]

http://leighb.com/jhanas.htm

[nprateem]

My favourite is Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond by Ajahn Brahm.

[calmoo]

Sam Harris’ ‘Waking up’ app is good. Starts from fundamentals and teaches you about the practice.

[rwhyan]

Indeed.

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