[rors]

Over the last few months I've been experimenting with Buddhist meditation, which leans heavily into this metaphor. They phrase the metaphor differently, with a focus on flattening of the grooves in your mind.

I've found these ideas helpful, but they're hardly novel. The Buddha lived over 2000 years ago. One big difference the objective. Most of these blogs are about hacking your mind to be more successful, whereas religions aim to make you more comfortable with your life as it currently is.

I think if you're going to experiment with upgrading your wetware, then you could do worse than look at Buddhism, or any other practice that encourages deep contemplation and promotes kindness. I have my issues with organised religion, but why not at least consider the thousands of years of prior art?

[FlyingSnake]

It is also a folly to equate Buddhist traditions with Self help book sellers. Siddhartha Gautam Buddha was just one of the 6 other prevalent Dharmic masters and there enough original material from many of those traditions. The Dharmic traditions arose over centuries through a healthy collaboration of diverse set of people over a vast geography.

[ufocia]

True, the Dharmic masters didn't have printing presses.

[gchamonlive]

Or late stage capitalism

[noufalibrahim]

I appreciate the point you're trying to make. However, my general experience of attempts to take "useful" parts of of religion and then sanitise them for secular mass consumption is that they're at best useless and at worst harmful.

Sure, there might be some proximal benefits to (say) meditation but these are things that were done in a larger (often spiritual) context and I'm not sure that pulling them out of that is wise.

[ufocia]

Don't kill and don't steal seem pretty useful and are embedded within many if not all secular laws.

[paulryanrogers]

Sometimes with massive caveats like stone adulterers and homosexuals.

[praptak]

Effects of meditation are there regardless of the religious context.

Although you are right in that the deeper stages (say as described in "The Mind Illuminated") may not make much sense without at least some spiritual foundation.

[physicles]

I sympathize. As someone who used to hold essentially fundamentalist views, I'm now deeply suspicious of anything supernatural. When I left, I didn't even try to smuggle out any of the good parts.

However, there's now tons of secular support for meditation. Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and one of the most anti-religion and anti-supernatural people out there, is basically leading the charge. I think that says something.

[noufalibrahim]

Interestingly, my main disagreements with the approach came primarily from the way Harris (and to a smaller degree Alain deBotton) attempted this.