On 25 June 2012, Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True website recommended a LONG video of a lecture by Sam Harris, a meditation practitioner, from April’s Global Atheist Conference in Melbourne. The video lecture is on the subject of the atheist attitude toward death, and Harris leads his audience through a mindfulness meditation exercise as part of the video.
I watched the whole video, and participated in the mindfulness meditation exercise.
I have to say that after listening to the whole lecture, I have the same misgivings Sam Harris has about being removed from any thoughts or judgments about the external world. There is genuine suffering in the world that it is important to do something about. There is a tension between getting in touch with the present moment and using a meaningful part of each day to solve problems and help our fellow human beings. Having lived in a predominantly Buddhist society during two different three-year stays as that society transformed from Third World colonialized poverty to First World free and democratic modernity, I'm not at all sure that most people would be more happy if most people were doing more mindfulness meditation.
"There is genuine suffering in the world that it is important to do something about"
You're right. But as the Buddhists say "Start where you are." How are you going to address all the suffering in the world if you can't address the suffering in your own heart or your own home? I would even say that, for some people at least, their frantic efforts to fix the world outside are simply a way of avoiding dealing with the world inside.
And it is certainly true that efforts to bring peace are probably more effective when they come from people who are living in peace with themselves.
I agree you have to direct this energy somewhere, though once you've done so and know you are actively doing so, these worries can start to settle - as they have a place to settle to, they have molded who you are and your action, your direction, your path in life. I agree you can't just ignore this energy, these thoughts and emotions, that wants to surface. Anything that needs to be dealt with will come to the surface when space exists for it to come up, and meditating in fact creates this mental space to allow such thoughts to surface. I believe individuals who think or say otherwise perhaps haven't realized that this is what they have done to direct their feelings of suffering into tangible action.
> Having lived in a predominantly Buddhist society during two different three-year stays as that society transformed from Third World colonialized poverty to First World free and democratic modernity, I'm not at all sure that most people would be more happy if most people were doing more mindfulness meditation.
Could you expand on this baffling non-sequitur? I truly can't make heads or tails of it.
As I understood it, the transformation happened because people were not just accepting their negative emotions about their country but actually threw rocks and organized rallies.
> "There is genuine suffering in the world that it is important to do something about"
I wonder if I'm in the same now-democratic society. Does it have Daoist influences? :)
I'd like to hear more about this tension you speak about so that I better address what you have to say. I've personally wrestled with mindfulness vs. action and one of the reasons I continue to practice mindfulness meditation is:
1. It's one of the most accessible types of meditation (in terms of finding a teacher) in the West.
2. Mindfulness and being grounded in the present moment has influenced the quality of my day-to-day action. While I won't go into detail, I feel as though my day to day actions have been guided by an increased sense of purpose and compassion.
I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective. This pleases the knee-jerk part of my brain which often screams "skip the mumbo-jumbo and show me the data!" (and I'm slowly working to tame that part of my brain, because I recognize that an "empirical or be damned" approach is not a balanced one).
In "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior", the author discusses how the idea of enlightenment being fully realized in an instant (like turning on a switch) is a misconception, and that in reality, its more about having enlightened moments, and then increasing the frequency of those moments, like slowly ramping up your enlightenment duty cycle over the course of several years.
This bit was one of those enlightened moments: "I realize that I should not ask myself how happy I am but rather how attached am I to happiness".
No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history. Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation. That's a fabrication of Buddhist monks whose level of consciousness is quite a bit lower than that of Gautama. Nowadays, the misunderstanding has been passed down for thousands of years, so what I'm saying now seems unacceptable in modern society.
If you accept that meditation is a way to get Enlightenment then it opens the possibility that anyone can be Enlightened. But in human history, only one or two men had the evidence that they could perceive everything in the world and could tell the Truth. Instead, Buddhists will tell you that you have to experience things to understand and prove them. But that is not the case of a scientist, philosopher, and Enlightened Beings - all of which can immediately show evidence when they point out something in truth.
The term of Enlightenment means "opening eyes to what is in the reality". It's used similarly in Eastern languages to mean "to realize".
So a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works.
So when you learn about happiness from an Enlightened Being, he doesn't teach you about sitting in meditation until you can train yourself not to care about happiness anymore. That's a way to lose yourself in the end.
Instead he can teach you exactly what the conditions are for happiness which must be fulfilled in order for you to be happy.
If someone claims he's Enlightened and teaches about happiness then they must be able to point out that where happiness is, what it is, what is the way to happiness, and what is the cause to lead you to the goal of happiness.
The reason why attachment is a problem is that attachment is one of the sources to make karma, and you can't be happy forever without conquering your karma (before it conquers oneself).
Things in the world operate by a very simple principle - and this principle lies at the essence of what is taught by all Enlightened Beings when they teach about "what is" in the world. But because the monks and Zen masters didn't learn this principle, I can realize that they don't know anything about true Buddha's teaching.
I'm telling you this because I'm worried that people will fall into danger practicing Zen and other forms of Buddhism. The truth in Buddha's teaching has degraded to the point that no one can know Buddha's teaching through the existent Buddhism - which although superior because of Buddha's teachings, nowadays has a similar quality to Christianity and other religions. I've seen people deceived so many times by monks and it's getting worse as time goes on.
"Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation."
He claimed he was enlightened by following the four noble truths, of which meditation is one component. It might not be possible to achieve enlightenment through only meditation, but it's probably not possible to achieve enlightenment without meditation either.
I see that you understand these as steps to be enlightened and perfect oneself, but these are not the things that the saints practiced before becoming Enlightened, but rather afterwards. The reason is that you already need to have a very high level of consciousness before you can distinguish right and wrong correctly - it can't be practiced until you've already realized.
what you say makes sense to me. I too doubt that by some chance Buddhism teachings turned out to be better preserved throughout millenia then any other "very old teachings" whatever it may be - Christianity or something else. Any information has the tendency to be misrepresented.
Thanks for having an open mind. :) It's hard to meet someone like you.
I learned like this from my teacher, a man who claims Supreme Enlightenment. He says that he is a Tathagata. It's the same name that Gautama Buddha said others should call Him while he is alive. All His teachings are free and for a while before he passed away he was available for answering the public's questions.
Here's one site with some decent English translations,
Oh come on, blueprint, that is the Tathagata[1], the only other enlightened being besides the original Tathagata to have graced earth? And the bump on his forehead is the Third Eye? You've got to be kidding me!
"Therefore, being diligent, frugal and honest are just right way and law to get happiness."[2] I think someone really missed the point here - this is probably taken directly out of the Protestant work ethic; definitely doesn't come from Buddhism.
You're right, it definitely did not come from Buddhism. Buddha's teaching itself does not derive from Buddhism, nor Hinduism, nor any other religions. It's derived from the world itself.
Here's a quote I was able to transcribe this from Tathagata,
"I'll speak very clearly here. Buddhism has nothing to do with all the Buddhas."
I learned like this from my teacher, a man who claims Supreme Enlightenment.
No offense intended, but where's the evidence? Yes, enlightenment is a personal and subjective experience, but do you have any independent citations or accounts of your teacher's enlightenment.
Yes, I'm sometimes in touch with a few of the other members. Tathagata's teachings are available for free online, his life story is there and he was a politician in Korea as well as a self-made businessman, so that should be easily verifiable.
What he asked people to do is to verify what he says before believing. In case you didn't see it, I left a link to one of the sites made by another member, it has some decent English translations. The proof that he is Enlightened is in the content of his teaching. Nobody who is not Enlightened can say the content that he has said. He also traveled the world to visit universities and religious institutions and met so many people. You can listen for yourself. Here's some audio of him meeting with American professors http://guiadelavida.com/audios.htm
"No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history."
Not sure what basis you have to say that. There are plenty of people who claim to have attained enlightenment who are alive today. There are even how-to guides that tell you exactly what to do down to the tiniest detail, e.g.:
There are huge numbers of claims, but who among the multitudes has the evidence? If any Buddhist monks or temple has Buddha's teachings, they should also have the ways of life from the problems to the resolutions. But they don't have them, and instead they use meditation to trick people into giving up the real answers. It's the same thing as giving themselves up. This is an important point and the root cause of this needs to be informed to people in society.
Every time I've gone to religious institutions, temples, etc. to verify, 99% of the time they turn out to be false gurus with self-contradictory or hypocritical claims - they just use words to get the better of people - and there's a huge gap in their level of consciousness and that of a truly Enlightened Being.
The evidence that someone is Enlightened and a Tathagata (one who opened his/her eyes completely to the world) is that s/he can explain things in the living reality precisely and can answer all concrete questions on the spot with exact answers. But if I were to go to the Buddhist temples and give them some basic questions they might be very uncomfortable and tell me to leave.
The only reason someone does not give an answer to a question is that they don't really know.
> Since when was enlightenment equal to having perfect phenomenal knowledge?
Yes, one of the abilities of someone who attains Enlightenment is that they become able to perceive things in the world exactly as they are, and can inform them to people exactly.
> You seem to be equating enlightenment with omniscience. Are you not?
Not exactly, but it's like that. I can say that their vision is greatly widened because they see from a much higher level. There are some things they can see which are very distant, and sometimes they can help people who are also very distant, using their power of consciousness. However, I've heard Tathagata say he doesn't use his mind very much, and that he simply sees everything that is inside an object when it is in front of him.
There are many people who claim the ability to see through walls and tell where other people are (mediums). They do that by letting their consciousness contact and receive information latent inside energy that's in the air. They call that wandering energy by terms like spirits, ghosts, dead souls, etc. However, besides the fact that it can be very unreliable and dangerous to do so, a living Buddha never keeps company with the dead, and only informs people of what he saw with his own eyes.
> Please tell us what questions you are asking as a qualifier on whether or not someone is enlightened.
Answered this in a sibling question, let me know if you're left with any unanswered questions
There are huge numbers of claims, but who among the multitudes has the evidence? If any Buddhist monks or temple has Buddha's teachings, they should also have the ways of life from the problems to the resolutions. But they don't have them
I would really like to know how you test this - how do you approach the evaluation if someone is enlightened or just pretending?
The wall is that we first have to know what Enlightenment is very correctly to check if something meets the criteria for Enlightenment. The way to verify what something is, lies in the results it makes - just like our example of a fruit tree. Seeds and leaves may look similar across an apple, plum, and cherry, but we know instantly what it is when we see, smell, and taste the fruit.
I've reported Master Tathagata's definition that Enlightenment is 'the opening of one's eyes to the world'. He's also said that Supreme Enlightenment (that of a Tathagata) is opening eyes to reality completely. So the first thing is - ask them any questions in reality - if they are unable to give the answer that can be verified in the reality (if they cannot realize what is in reality) then they have not completed their Enlightenment.
A second thing I'll leave with you is like this. A bodhisattva cannot have attained Enlightenment completely - because if s/he had, then the one would be a Buddha.Yet it seems that a Buddha only comes to the world once every 3,000 years or so.
The term of Bodhisattva means "gods who have good power and are seeking for the truth". (Sorry cannot cite as it was in yet-untranscribed audio from Tathagata) They protect Buddha, but could not remove their karma totally yet, so they are still seekers. However, sometimes some Bodhisattvas who have a power to stop their karma can get into the same dimension that the Buddhas reside in (paradise). So the second thing to check is whether they claim they are Enlightened. It's a red flag to me.
The third thing is that an Enlightened Being never lies. Instead, they bet their life every day in order to inform people of the truth - this is the proof of their love for mankind, and it is the greatest teaching. So your continuous verification of what people say (imho, according to the facts in the world) is essential whether or not the person actually has evidence that they know truth, or is telling a lie.
My understanding is limited, but I thought that enlightenment was a buddhist term used to describe significant subjective perceptual changes which are more likely to occur with enough quality meditation practice. I was under the impression that there are thousands of people alive today, in various traditions like Zen, who claim to have experienced these changes in perception in various guises.
a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works.
Is this derived from a particular definition of enlightenment? I'm not really familiar with the buddhist religious texts etc.
Enlightenment, in the context you mentioned, indicates that you abandon one consciousness and get a new one.
However, what happens through meditation is not the same as that and it has a different point than Enlightenment - meditation is an activity for changing your mind, and the result of modern meditation is that your mind gets darker and you can lose yourself. People can see lots of illusions in the darkness of their minds, and within a relatively short period of time through meditation they can make contact with some very strange phenomena.
What is the source of the strange phenomena in their consciousness? It can happen because they contacted an external consciousness. If the practitioner is weak-willed, the wandering consciousness will enter them immediately and can push their own consciousness out of the way and just drive their body. At that moment, they will show a different kind of behavior, oftentimes claiming knowledge of something that they didn't see with their own eyes (what they don't know).
When the other spirit enters them, their own consciousness just becomes dormant and feels less of a burden so people mistake this for nirvana and peace. People don't recognize this about themselves and only try to change their mind through meditation because they don't know the structure of consciousness and how the mind is generated. The fact is that people's consciousness doesn't change very much without Enlightenment, so no matter how much they practice meditation they won't be able to know Buddha's teachings until they open their eyes to how the world works.
There are two things in the core of consciousness - karma, and virtue. If you have more karma it makes your mind darker, and if you have less Karma and more virtue (conscience), it makes your mind brighter. This happens because what you have done gets input into yourself again.
Because people have their own karma, they have their own perspectives and perceptive ability, but can't easily find out what result in their life comes from what questions they have because they can't see what causes lie in themselves and what kind of problems they have. That's why we need a good teacher. Buddha noted that common people always see things in the exact opposite way, and it's because they have karma.
On the other hand, an Enlightened one can realize what is in the actuality because he burned out his karma completely and doesn't use his mind to perceive the world. As a result of stopping and removing his karma, he can recover his own consciousness, and if he can keep his life then he comes to attain his Enlightenment through his life activities teaching what he can see. It's through this teaching that Enlightenment is attained, but until now this teaching hasn't been passed down properly.
So the reason why meditation doesn't work to produce Enlightenment is that it's not a way to recover and save oneself - it's a way to abandon oneself and never be reborn. It's the exact opposite of Buddha's teaching!
I can see similarities between your views and my views on Buddhism and it's fairly interesting to see how diverse it can be.
For me, enlightenment is a life state that we go through on a moment to moment basis. We go through 10 different life states every moment. It is possible for anyone to find happiness regardless of circumstances. I do agree that abandoning one's self is completely opposite of the Buddha's teaching and in fact, an enlightened person is one who seeks happiness for both him/herself as well as the happiness of all living beings.
I would ask you to give me a citation, but I'm not sure if it will be so helpful.
We know all the scriptures were written by monks, perhaps 500 or more years after Gautama Buddha passed away. Most of the time they just wrote down what they wanted, or from their own ideas and opinions.
"Buddha nature" is one of the first lies that Buddhist monks tell people. People donate to the monks who practice meditation because they want to invest in someone who is spending all his time on a path they think will get to Enlightenment. But it is not virtue to donate to the monks.
Someone only can have Enlightenment and Buddha nature by removing every falsehood from inside themselves. But if he did that he'd be a Tathagata in this lifetime, and it is ultimately very rare to encounter a living enlightened being.
One of the first things you said in this thread is a reference to what Buddha said.
Actually, your reference itself was false. You said that Buddha said enlightenment cannot come through meditation, yet, Buddha stated enlightenment can come through adherence to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, one of the limbs of that being right concentration/samadhi/meditation.
"Most of the time they just wrote down what they wanted, or from their own ideas and opinions."
I would ask you for a citation, but it obviously would not be helpful. You only write down from your own ideas and opinions and think it is Truth.
There are certain things we can know for sure through the scriptures, and finally I have a chance to talk about this question on this thread, so thanks for asking. :)
Gautama Buddha taught for about 40 years and met lots of people. If we try to summarize just a few parts, of _all_ of his teachings over his entire teaching career, what do we come up with?
The two things are as follows:
1. Transmigration
2. The law of cause and effect
An Enlightened being tells about 'what is' in the world, and can teach people how the world works. That's exactly what Gautama Buddha taught, although he taught it quite a long time ago.
Finally, there's more evidence in the content of the prajna paramita sutra, if you have seen that one, which explains about some cases in perfecting oneself and opening one's wisdom eye. No one can explain that content without already having been Enlightened.
Yes, I have some understanding about it so I can explain a little, but it's necessary to learn from an Enlightened being directly to get perfect understanding. The good news is that it is indeed simple, but it's not easy for everyone to accept, no matter their age or educational career.
The principle means that something is determined - like the formula in arithmetic whereby 1 + 1 = 2; as long as the question (and definitions of factors) remains the same then the result will always be exactly the same.
I can state that the fixed principle of the world is that things make results repeatedly through what is inside themselves.
We can find that everything that exists in the world does so through actions, and the structure which we can verify is produced through the process of activities is that of an object which moves through three states (dimensions), changing itself depending on the specific things (causes) in the object.
A clear and simple example is that of fruiting trees. An apple tree only knows how to make apples because that's what's encoded inside itself. Through the process of its life, if it can produce a fruit with seeds, thereby keeping its own origin, it can be reborn again if it's got the right environment.
The golden rule is not so helpful because the problems to necessitate the rule are not present in the rule itself (like commandments). People who don't already have virtue can't awaken their conscience through the golden rule (to get the result - morality) because the very source of the solutions (the problems) are missing. Instead, when people learn and correctly understand the principle they don't need to be told to do good and not to do bad, they naturally start to recognize from what causes good and bad results happen to themselves, so they don't want to do anything that would harm themselves after they confirm.
Gautama Buddha was a special case of someone in whose past lives there was endless awakening. It was for this reason that he was able to be born with very little karma left, making him able to get enlightenment through his individual practice of asceticism. So he's the one who became a Buddha for the very first time from being a Bodhisattva. But keep in mind that his practice was very different from anyone around him, and there was no one who practiced the meditation of the day who was able to be Enlightened like he was.
With that foundation, I can answer your question a little more directly by telling you that he was able to realize Buddha's teaching through the world itself, after he opened his own eyes. (Buddha's teaching means how the world is operated, so everything is its evidence and can be found through any examples)
If you have any doubts please keep asking questions :) This can be dangerous territory if mistreated
So, as I understand, this is also a main principle of most modern sciences: outcome of a proper experiment must be reproducible. In other words, given enough detailes that matter, it's possible to predict behaviour of the system.
Also if an Enlightened being sees the world as it is and gets perfect understanding directly, he(she) can make what is generally considered scientific breakthroughs with ease. Does it really happen?
Actually, He claimed to understand entirely how gravity works and is generated. He also had very extensive knowledge of medical science, and how consciousness works. I've personally listened to about 50 conversations with American researchers he traveled across the country to meet, and not one of them asked him a question to verify the evidence of his claims, or learn more. No one wanted to learn from him, but not one could answer his simple questions about their field of study. I really regret this about them because I'm finding lately that I have some questions I should have asked him when I was younger.
Yet, despite his extensive travels, it seems so easy for people who claim philosophical or scientific knowledge to criticize him before they verify who he is and what he really can perceive.
Psychologically speaking, why do people behave like that? In my experience it occurs when they don't want their falsehoods to be revealed.
To condense that long explanation, the principle is that the universe is a chaotic system. It is: self similar, inherently unpredictable and deterministic. Seriously dude, read up on Chaos Theory.
Now here's where it gets interesting. The mind is fully contained in the universe - it is physical. So emotions, thoughts and feelings are all things. They are emergent behaviors of this physical reality. Hence the dual mode of thought being incorrect - there is no distinction between objective and subjective, they are one and the same. So if the universe is deterministic and our experience is physical, then there is no free will.
It should be, but there's no concrete teaching of how things in the reality are and how the world works, in current Buddhist scripture, much less any kind of meditation.
The meditation that Buddha taught is vastly different than the modern ones. He let his disciples sit when they had nothing to do. What he guided them to practice is not to do with breath, nor concentration, nor compassion. But much more concretely, he taught to try to pursue and then confirm the reality of what you've heard, and that you should only allow yourself to accept the reality once you've confirmed. Confirmation is essential because people can easily deceive themselves when they misunderstand something.
If there's anyone who opened eyes to reality through meditation, you should ask them concrete questions about things in the reality to verify. They probably have understood the term reality as one experience, state, or object, which is the indication that they are being deceived by someone/something. You'll have to verify case-by-case to be sure.
Reality can be defined as the set of results which are determined to appear from the problems that things in the world have. Because these results are determined in a fixed principle, someone who knows Buddha's teaching can easily recognize an discuss any field of study at length without difficulty, even if they've never studied it before, because they can realize how it works and thus recognize the problems (matters) involved in the field through the person they're talking to.
Hope this helps. Ask any questions if I can clarify something
> Reality can be defined as the set of results which are determined to appear from the problems that things in the world have. Because these results are determined in a fixed principle, someone who knows Buddha's teaching can easily recognize an discuss any field of study at length without difficulty, even if they've never studied it before, because they can realize how it works and thus recognize the problems (matters) involved in the field through the person they're talking to.
I don't agree with this. My perception of reality is: examining without adornment, recognizing anatta and anicca. That is, to look at all things without coloration from judgement and to recognize them both in their selves and not-selves(in other words, the simultaneous existence and non-existence of a phenomenon, related to its dependent origination from the surroundings).
I don't think it has anything to do with an egotistical human view of "reality" -- such as being able to understand any subject without having been exposed to it. Of course you can't understand anything without having been exposed to it... you are still a human, you still have a brain, you still have memories and collected knowledge.
Reality isn't, to me, about words or concepts, but instead it concerns the inherent nature of phenomena.
I read your message - i've heard but never learned about anatta and anicca, so I don't know what experience you had. But I'm interested so I'd like to confirm about it through simple questions if it's alright..
So, my question is, what could you know (or become to realize) through that teaching?
"I really enjoy posts like this which take a subject which is usually discussed from a "mystical" or "spiritual" perspective, and instead attempt to approach it from a physiological perspective."
The more you understand both perspectives, the more you realize that the differences between them aren't actually that big. If you listen to enough buddhist geeks talks this becomes apparent pretty quickly.
I'd also recommend reading the journal article Mechanisms of Mindfulness: A Buddhist Psychological Model:
It basically takes the buddhist model mindfulness and translates it into an academic model. It's a good example of a case where the only difference between spiritual beliefs and academic ones is the language used to express them.
" the only difference between spiritual beliefs and academic ones is the language used to express them"
I'm not sure what is meant by "academic", but if it's a synonym for science then I disagree. Watch the link below (feynman on the scientific method), a little after the 5 minute mark he talks about the problems of "vague" theories. This vagueness is where spiritual beliefs usually diverge from scientific beliefs.
What's generally meant by the mind being separate from the body is that the idea that we control our bodies by thinking is actually an illusion. The way Buddhists know this is that in the body starts controlling itself without any input from the mind, something you can experience relatively easily from meditating. It only took me about 6 or 7 days to achieve the beginnings of this. (Scared the crap out of me, but it was insanely cool at the same time.)
Yeah, when they say enlightenment is like a lightning strike, they tend to fail to mention that the lightning hits again. And again. And again. And again. :P
Should be Titled: "Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase MY Happiness".
For me it does but I practice a very different and rare form of meditation. I can only call it "Sleeping Awake". Which took a while to achieve.
Basically, when you go to sleep at night your body slows its breathing & heart rate and you loose feeling of your limbs, while your mind looses consciousness and you black out. Your body and mind shut down at the same time. With meditation, particularly deep meditation (out of body experience / trance / hypnosis) you "sleep awake". Your body shuts down and goes to sleep but you are completely conscious the entire time. You can't feel your limbs, heart beat, or lungs breathing. You completely loose track of time and gravity and feel like you're floating around in a massive black, empty, nothingness.
If feels like you're floating around in the universe before it was made. Completely empty and quiet. No gravity. No direction. No time. No space. No memories. No emotions. No body. No flesh. It's the most peace you'll ever experience in your life apart from sleep and death. There's absolutely nothing on your mind. The only thing you're aware of, is your existence. That's all. And when you wake up, you feel amazingly refreshed. Not just physically but mentally. For me personally, I feel content and happy the rest of the day.
It makes me happy because the experience reminds me that, honestly, I don't matter. None of us do. We might matter to each other, but to the universe (which is mostly empty) our existence is worthless, useless, meaningless, purposeless. No matter what happens in your life, good or bad. Existence goes on, even after life is gone. And this concept, that nothing really matters, just takes a huge load off your shoulders. I don't know why "Sleeping Awake" evokes these feelings but it just does. It's a very calming and neutral experience.
So meditation for me did the opposite of what it did to the author of the article. It allowed me to control my emotions much more and see things from a neutral point of view. It allowed me to think, and observe an event or thought BEFORE reacting to it with an opinion or emotion.
@ChrisNorstrom: I agree with you, as an hour a day of meditation for a year (which is a lot and highly commendable) didn't seem to work for KenjiCrosland.
I too am a novice in pursuit of happiness, with just some basic lessons taken from teachers plus some self learning. However, like you my experience has been much more positive.
My take is similar to what others have mentioned in their comments: meditation is but one of a number of legs on which true happiness stands. It is through meditation that one gets glimpses of what Buddhists call the "nature of mind". These only remain glimpses until you build the other legs: boddhicitta (poorly translated into English as compassion) and a deep-seated realization that all things are impermanent. The practice of boddhicitta and the understanding of impermanence, among others, are the antidote to ego or the concept of the self, the prime cause of all suffering which arises from the desire and craving that comes part and parcel with ego. Boddhicitta requires the building of a thought process of thinking more of others, and gradual surrender of the desires for oneself (less of I, me, mine, etc). Practice all these elements together with meditation and I'm pretty certain one can only be the better for it. In my opinion Kenji is lacking the other aspects without which meditation can't provide happiness.
It's worth noting that "happiness" is a loaded term, quite different for different people. I'm taking a good guess that in it's ultimate form, Buddhist masters would equate happiness with enlightenment with nature of mind, which is what one sees glimpses of while meditating. IMHO, that itself is something to chew upon.
I suppose I didn't make it clear enough in my post, but the practice over the year has led to a significant increase in well-being for me. Emotions, though they may be felt more strongly, also pass more quickly. Instead of a unsustainable happiness or Euphoria, it's more like a pervading sense of peace. I don't think I could have kept it up if this wasn't the case!
It would be lucid dreaming if he went deeper, but if he's still just seeing just black he's not deep enough into it for the dreaming to start. Next come color blobs, then sounds, then flashes of imagery and eventually full on 3d as if you're there dreaming. It's wicked to maintain consciousness without blacking out from the waking state into the dream state.
Well even though I agree that what we do is "worthless, useless, meaningless, purposeless" in universe scale it does not make me happy. I can be happy by thinking for example that universe defaults to not-existence (since most of it is empty/dead/not alive) and I'm lucky enough to experience life(even for short time), but I'm rather being happy despite worthlessness of my life rather than thanks to it. Could you explain your thought process that led do you to happiness from being meaningless?
For something to have meaning, it has to have context. For instance getting a high score in tetris has meaning to me. But for most people it's meaningless. For some people, "the big bang theory" is meaningful. For others, it's completely meaningless.
To truly feel everything is meaningless, sounds like depression.
Well personally I'm quite happy with my life. For my helping other live better lives* is meaningful(but if everyone had same purpose it would be uncomfortably circular).
I found it interesting that ChrisNorstrom can be happy when he reminds himself that he does not matter. Either I misunderstood something or there is a way to be happy even about that.
*happier/longer/leading to total higher number of happy people in the future etc(Although obviously my success in this goals is very limited)
I found it interesting that ChrisNorstrom can be happy when he reminds himself that he does not matter.
It removed the stress in my life. I was at a point in my 20s when my failures started to surface and I started realizing that my desires and dreams were likely to never happen. That's when I became aware that I was not going to accomplish 99% of what I wanted to do in life. My idea of happiness was riding so much on "I have to accomplish ________" that it just destroyed me out when I wasn't able to accomplish _________.
After Sleeping Awake the relief was almost immediate. The realization that nothing matters, and more importantly nothing that you do matters or makes a dent in the universe somehow took away all the stress of failure. Failure was ok because it didn't matter, success wasn't all that important because it didn't matter.
When you live your life with the mindset that everything you do will affect someone either now or in the future, doing anything becomes painfully stressful. Because you're afraid of messing up someone else's life. Weather or not you have children now will dictate weather or not millions of people will live thousands of years from now. All of that puts a tremendous amount of stress on me. The realization that none of it matters takes away the pain. Weather I have kids or not, in a few billion years the sun will engulf the earth and everything that humanity has ever built will be destroyed. It'll look like we were never here. No one will care. No one will miss us. We truly will not matter to anyone because there will be no one to even notice we are gone. As depressing as that sounds, there's an upside to it all. Live your life and be happy because you're only here for a short moment in time.
Also we live in a very connected world right now. And the human mind just wasn't made to live with that kind of information. Every time someone dies or is suffering we find out about it. Every war, every conflict, every pain, every bit of injustice is broadcast all over the world. It's inescapable. The more you know the harder it is to be happy with that kind of knowledge. The realization that none of those events matter takes away their ability to deeply hurt you.
The problem is I care too much, other people's problems become my problems. I'm very sensitive and extremely emotional. Which is why I avoid making friends with people. Their life and mine start getting intertwined and it just becomes too painful to go on. Same with family. Sometimes I like to fantasize that I'm the only human left on earth, everyones gone. Because I hate seeing unsolved problems, criminals not brought to justice, people not achieving their dreams (like me) or going through pain.
So with that in mind, realizing that none of it matters, is the only thing keeping me from going insane. It allows me to let go and be at peace with existing in a non perfect world.
I like the article, but I think the practice here is lacking something. I realize that there are many meditation practices, but the writer here mentions Buddhism, and so I'm assuming insight, or vipassana, meditation.
The practice of vipassana is not to focus everything on the sensations that you have, but only to note that they are there, and move on. I sort of say "that's interesting", when I notice a sensation, and then move on in my body scanning or noting--whichever form I happen to be doing.
By concentrating on those emotions, pains, and discomfort, you are giving them more attention than they deserve, and doing yourself a disservice. You are doing the same thing that screws us up in our daily life--hanging on to the countless emotional experiences we have all the time. The writer of this article could use the guidance of an experienced practitioner to help avoid and get out of potholes like this.
Another thing I'd like to mention is the emotional rollercoaster that this person is experiencing. One should look deeper than just the surface emotions that arise, and look to the cause in your body, mind, or whatever is coming at you from the "outside" experience of life. Just as with the discomforts of sitting in meditation, and emotions, you should consider the events in your life in the same manner, since you'll eventually realize that they have little intrinsic meaning, but have an effect on your thoughts and emotions just the same if you allow it.
Accept that the thing happened, and then move on or act as needed, without letting emotion and overthinking clog it up.
"The practice of vipassana is not to focus everything on the sensations that you have, but only to note that they are there, and move on." Exactly. Continuing to focus on it is a fixation of thought. From what I'm learning, meditation is letting the thoughts flow by without judgment. Focusing on pain, hurt etc for extended periods is no better than psychotherapy: it just reinforces it.
I can understand if this post is provocative to some, but I don't think there is any getting around that.
To meditate is to reprogram ones mind. There are many ways to do this. This guy reprogrammed himself to feel more suffering and pain. Since he is so invested in the idea that meditation must be good, he instead of realizing that he is causing himself harm, he justifies his practice by saying that happiness isn't the goal.
"I realized that meditation was not meant to purge our minds of negative emotions or thought patterns,"
Meditation is a tool. It doesn't have any purpose.
"I realize that I should not ask myself how happy I am but rather how attached am I to happiness. How much do I judge my self-worth based on how happy or sad I feel?"
There is no should.
I want to give everyone here the opposite of his advice. Focus on the positive things, not everything.
The funny part about all this is the stark misconceptions westerners (and perhaps many easterners too) have about meditation in general.
The authority on meditation is long rooted in the subjective scientific (the observation and inference of trends based on data) scriptures of the East, yet most are willing to accept whatever their local practitioner has to say, or whoever is currently recommending meditation to them.
Meditation, whilst extremely easy to teach, is extremely difficult to practise. You will be EXTREMELY hard pressed to find any authority on the subject recommending meditation without specifying its prerequisite, self-control.
A mind that infested with thoughts and desires, constantly fluttering hither and thither is unfit to meditate. To force such a mind into single pointed concentration is dangerous.
Meditation is the final stage of spiritual practice, not the beginning.
I'm not clear how just internalizing stuff via meditation can possibly help.
To understand and process experiences, you must be able to tell a coherent story about it to other people, ideally in writing. This is another reason I'm so gung-ho about blogging. And there's science behind it too:
Zen and the Brain by James Austin (MIT Press) is also good. The author is an emeritus professor of neuroscience, who started doing Zen during the 60s while he was working in Japan.
In my experience Meditation directly increases happiness over longer term by decreasing our attachment to body/mind, there by decreasing the unnecessary suffering.
There are different forms of meditation, each with different emphasis. The one mentioned here is a Buddhist (Insight/Vipassana) meditation where one experiences sensations on the body without judgment. The Passage Meditation (http://www.easwaran.org/) for example emphasizes systematic training of attention to turn inward and dwell continuously on a single focus within consciousness, in this case memorized inspirational passages from worlds great mystics. In essence "we become what we meditate on".
To be happy we need to decrease self-will or ego. In my experience meditation alone is not effective in subsiding the self-will. Meditation along with allied disciplines is necessary to slowly chip away self-will, overcome conditioned habits of mind and find our true nature which is peace, joy and love - the very source of happiness.
MBSR is becoming increasingly common in cognitive behavioral therapy as well -- it's interesting (to me) to see how much intersection there is between meditative practice and what cognitive behavioral therapy is discovering. Different paths to the same conclusions.
There are studies that show a strong correlation between meditation and higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress. These studies are a big part of why meditation is sort of trendy nowadays AFAIK. Googling [meditation study stress] (or whichever claim you're interested in) will yield a number of relevant results.
This shouldn't be surprising given that the traditional maps of the Vipassana explicitly talk about negative stages. The problem is that somehow this information is not commonly known. It would benefit practitioners a great deal. In this vipassana community, for instance, it is considered important enough to be mentioned as a sticky post right at the top, http://dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_b...
Interesting article. I approached it wanting to share the vast insights I've gained after meditating for years. Though I left with a new perspective. Thank you.
"Vast insights" was a joke because I caught my ego looking for a chance to prove how smart it is.
When I started meditating (10 years ago?), I wanted to make a wildly successful business to show how smart and precocious I was. Though things don't quite work that way, and even if I achieved big success, I don't think I would have understood my motivations. Now I want to create a productive creative life. It's the same goal, but focussed the opposite direction.
Whoever said meditation will increase happiness is a false statement.
Meditating for 1 year will get you nowhere. Meditation needs to be practiced like clockwork.
Prolong meditation practice will instill stillness of mind. This is where the beauty is. Happiness is a state of mind. So "stillness" is the key and then it is upto you how you flow your stillness. Now, would it be stillness if it flows?
Love the discussion here and I'd be happy to add a few thoughts when I set aside some time to. Just wanted to point out that there's a much higher quality version of the video than the one I originally linked to in the post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCwC7XBQq9o
To me it all depends on your thought process. Like if i meditate with a certain intent it may help me feel happy during a given day. I dont think one even has to meditate for that kind of effect. If i think to myself about how happy i am and why i deserve fantastic things, i become increasingly optimistic
i'm amazed he did it 1 hour per day for a YEAR. i've been meditating for 2 years. the first 6 months i did it 1 hour each day. after that it fell off a cliff. i now average around 10 minutes 3x week.
Every time I have tried to meditate I just feel ridiculous and stop. But reading this description of its effects, I really don't understand the benefit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums
I watched the whole video, and participated in the mindfulness meditation exercise.
I have to say that after listening to the whole lecture, I have the same misgivings Sam Harris has about being removed from any thoughts or judgments about the external world. There is genuine suffering in the world that it is important to do something about. There is a tension between getting in touch with the present moment and using a meaningful part of each day to solve problems and help our fellow human beings. Having lived in a predominantly Buddhist society during two different three-year stays as that society transformed from Third World colonialized poverty to First World free and democratic modernity, I'm not at all sure that most people would be more happy if most people were doing more mindfulness meditation.