[runn1ng]

I will share my two cents, how I overcome my depression. It sounds deadly simple, and it sort of is.

1) regular excercise. Make some small, daily routine (I prefer running) and stick to it. The endorphines work wonders. The body starts feeling good after a few days.

2) (and this will be maybe controversial due to The religious undertones) regular meditation. While excercise clears your body, meditation clears your mind. Maybe it's not "really" doing anything and it's just a placebo, but frankly, it doesn't really matter. What I do is zen meditation (of soto school), which is basically just staring to wall for 20 minutes a day.... and it helps wonders.

So yeah.... those two commandments help me. Your mileage may vary.

[ams6110]

I really don't get the anti-religion sentiment here. If you find in religious teachings a way to live happily, productively, in a socially positive way, why is that a problem or anything to apologize for?

[runn1ng]

As a person who is still kind of atheistic, I can understand that sentiment.

Basically, scientific thinking forces constant verification of everything and encourages questioning, while religious thinking (even with buddhism) has far more dogmas and forces acceptance and, to a certain degree, discourages questioning.

What drove me to zen-buddhism is the fact that the religious part is kept rather small and it is far more focused on daily practice.

[jjb123]

Out of curiosity, why did you choose the words "still kind of atheist"?

[runn1ng]

Because I cannot really believe in a higher power. I don't believe in ghosts and try not to ve superstitious. I think most of the religious texts (even in buddhism) is bullshit. I constantly try to question everything.

And yet I ended up in a zen group, basically a religious organization. (A little like Ivan Karamazov.)

[johnchristopher]

> I think most of the religious texts (even in buddhism) is bullshit. I constantly try to question everything.

Doubt is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.

Most of the religious texts aren't bullshit. Especially the bible, which is anchored in a very old tradition and way of thinking.

Theology is really an interesting body of knowledge. Out-of-context quotes of the bible, it is almost always cited like that, aren't relevant and detrimental.

Running from judeo-christian tenets to a softened-up "occidentalised" Buddhism isn't more enlightening.

Context: I am an atheist, my mother is a protestant pastor, her husband is a die-hard science chemist and that make for some interesting and heated winter evening discussions :)

[runn1ng]

No doubt buddhism in the west is "softened up", but you know what, maybe it works better that way.

Christianity never made sense to me, with its insistence on guilt. You are supposed to feel guilty for what Adam did, guilty for what people did to Jesus, guilty for your inner thoughts, guilty for your supposed sins that the Satan put there.

That's the opposite of what I need, thank you.

[abhimir]

upvoted for the Dostoevsky reference

[CrankyPants]

Because this is HN and we're all expected to apologize for being anything but categorically dismissive of religion.

[MartinCron]

I have one place, just one, where being a nonbeliever doesn't make me feel like a deviant distrusted outsider.

I don't approve of disrespectful dismissals, but I understand why some people are seduced by it.

[dasil003]

Wow, time to move.

[devcpp]

...and these are the most upvoted comments. HN is really a parody of itself.

[hnriot]

Because those same set of teachings often differ very slightly from someone else's and usually ends in a war, or at the very least, a great deal of wasted bloodshed. See history for examples.

Why you're supposed to apologize is because your religion - no matter which particular mythology you subscribe to, has likely caused an immeasurable amount of sorrow for many others.

[crassus]

Where are the peaceable, prosperous, and happy atheist nations hiding?

[vukmir]

>"Where are the peaceable, prosperous, and happy atheist nations hiding?"

In Scandinavia, perhaps?

[crassus]

In modern times perhaps. But they were Christian for a thousand years before that. Majority atheist nations have existed for only a fraction of an instant in historical terms (unless you count the Buddhists as atheists). The first was probably the USSR.

[enraged_camel]

Stop moving goalposts.

[marcosdumay]

They have been conquered. Literally. At older times religion was one of the biggest tools used to create armies, and conquer the neighbors' land.

[crassus]

Name some of them.

[CaptainZapp]

You may want to educate yourself by looing into the 30 year war, as one of many, many exmples.

[crassus]

Indeed, religion makes you happier[1], so its strange the author left it out of his ten points

""[9] and a review of 498 studies published in peer-reviewed journals concluded that a large majority of them showed a positive correlation between religious commitment and higher levels of perceived well-being and self-esteem and lower levels of hypertension, depression, and clinical delinquency.[12] A meta-analysis of 34 recent studies published between 1990 and 2001 found that religiosity has a salutary relationship with psychological adjustment, being related to less psychological distress, more life satisfaction, and better self-actualization.[13] Finally, a recent systematic review of 850 research papers on the topic concluded that "the majority of well-conducted studies found that higher levels of religious involvement are positively associated with indicators of psychological well-being (life satisfaction, happiness, positive affect, and higher morale) and with less depression, suicidal thoughts and behavior, drug/alcohol use/abuse."[14]"

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_happiness

[marcosdumay]

I'd try an hypothesis that religion gives a huge fixed amount of happiness, at the cost of a small amount of unhappiness that slowly accumulates through the entire life, and even through generations.

Looks like the most logical outcome for me, but I don't know how to test it - or even if there is enough data in the world to test it now. Anyway, the usual correlation is not causality applies here.

[crassus]

Given that the vast majority of all people that have ever lived have been religious, your hypothesis is going to be very hard to test. Now what do we call untestable beliefs?

[nbouscal]

> religion makes you happier

In this case the distinction between correlation and causation is actually very important. The alternative causal chain, that happy people are more likely to become religious, is highly plausible. Further, there are myriad plausible confounding variables. In many cases correlation can be taken as evidence of causation, but in this particular case it really should not be.

[6d0debc071]

Religion isn't necessarily something you can believe in if you're set up to reason in certain ways. Someone whose response is going to be, 'Where is the evidence and to how many places?' is not going to be able to create such a belief.

By the time people are adults, if they haven't grown up with religion, I suspect the response to such a commandment would be something along the lines of 'That instruction set isn't implemented on this architecture - and I'm not sure I can, or would like, to become the sort of architecture where it can be.'

So, that might be one line of thought as to why it was left out.

[Dewie]

I guess it's the same reason why the top recommendations in places like this for feeling better when you're down is things like exercise: the effects of exercise is well-documented and fairly reproduce-able. You put activity in and then you get dopamine out. You get to talk about your well being as a (seemingly) easily measured and to a degree manipulable brain chemistry. As soon as you start to wander into territory where the effects are harder to measure and the science behind it (if there is any empirical schience behind it) is not as hard as sciences like biology, like psychology (or, god forbid, self development literature), all of a sudden that's too "wooey" and shrinky.

As for religion; if they don't believe in it, then it's just some placebo-like effect if you get anything positive out of the "wooey" practices. And placebos are even more finnicky and is (by it's very nature) not something that you're well served trying to find the cause and effect for.

[yaddayadda]

layperson cite for finicky placebos: http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2013/01/are-placebos-really-s...

[rorrr2]

Because most religious teachings are horrible at best. Most religious people don't even read their religious texts, yet they try to force them onto everyone.

Meditation is actually different from religion, since it demonstrably works, there are scientific studies. Sam Harris, for instance, strongly supports it.

[derefr]

I wouldn't say there's anything fundamentally religious about meditation, other than as an accident of history. As far as I can tell, it's just an exercise for the executive-function part of your brain.

[oskarth]

There are two great things about this advice. First, it's based on personal experience. Second, it's limited to only a few suggestions which are either implemented or not, rather than a laundry list of vague suggestions.

It's surprisingly often that both of these things are missing.

[grannyg00se]

2) Shouldn't be controversial at all. Meditation isn't about religion. It's about self hackery. We love that :)

[webnrrd2k]

I heartily agree -- I went through a really bad depression and found that regular meditation and exercise made a tremendous difference, far more than medication.

Just a few quick notes: Aerobic exercise helped me more than strength training, so, if you're depressed, I'd recommend running, swimming, and/or bicycling.

Diet has been very important, too. Everyone is different, but I find a mostly vegetarian diet, low on processed foods, to be the best for me overall.

I think meditation helped the most. It's been a tremendously useful skill that has helped me in many areas of my life. I found Vipassana and Zen-style meditation, as

Check out Mindfulness in Plain English (http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html) (the author has a series of books, all are really good), and Mastering the Core Teaching of the Buddah (http://integrateddaniel.info/book/).

[exit]

do you sit zazen at a zendo with others, 20 minutes a day?

[runn1ng]

I don't, unfortunately. Our group meets once a week, I am doing zazen privately the other 6 days.