Comment by vjerancrnjak
2 days ago
I find it interesting how meditation eventually becomes an anxiety reduction method, or general emotion management.
What should it be if there is no burden of stress or negative impression of any emotion? Why rid of stress? It comes and goes, it is as fleeting as relaxation.
I guess meditation is a insight into there being no problem to solve, once that insight is clear, there is no need for meditation.
I notice I often have very strong knee-jerk reactions to these kind of comments.
It's usually from some person that has not spent very much time meditating at all or invested much time around the various cultures which treasure and pride themselves in their meditative practices. It usually goes something like:
"[Some kind of reasoning], therefore, there is no need to meditate."
I'd like to provide an analogy which I think fits:
We use our muscles every day. If you just use your muscles well, there's no need for strength training!
And sure, I mean, that KIND of works. But like... There's a LOT of research around the benefits of strength training. And there's a multitude of reasons why someone might want to get involved in strength training. Very few people aspire to become powerlifters, etc.
IMHO, it's a dangerous view to take, as it can lead to dismissal of a lot of fantastic use cases, and it leads to people dismissing meditation outright ("No doctor, my friend said that if I just move correctly, I don't need strength training!").
And yes, similar to strength, there's no upper limit on training for things like focus, concentration, mindfulness.
There's no 'need' for meditation sure, but by that logic there's no 'need' for most things.
What seems to be true to me is that it's absolutely fantastic in terms of technologies available to us for self (and also society)-improvement.
The Buddha used the analogy that once you reach the other shore you discard the boat.
The idea of no longer needing formal meditation after enlightenment isn't new.
It’s strongly rejected by most schools of zen, fwiw. Using meditation as a tool to get somewhere, then discarding it once you are “there” is not zen buddhism.
One interpretation is: Because you are now always in a meditative state.
I am doubtful of the scientific validity and am definitively not dismissive of cultures that use meditations for inquiry into Self.
Strength training is a good example because it is an immensley stressful activity with adaptations that sometimes go into tics.
I believe I’ve read accounts of experienced meditators also stressing themselves to the verge of lunacy. Some even deal with panic attacks , unannounced, despite lecturing on inner peace.
Dedicated mediators sometimes experience signs and symptoms of psychosis
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8380174/
In general psychosis-proneness is a quantity that people have more or less, some people have harmless hallucinations or "unusual experiences" but psychosis-prone people have more trouble when they are under more stress. Some researchers think that meditation practice could be protective
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-01856-y
Personally mindless use of the word "mindful" is a pet peeve of mine because I knew somebody who would talk about mindfulness just before he walked into an open pit. Also back when I was more anxious I always thought my mind was "full" by default and wanted to empty it, I found that many practices would just fill my mind up with more noise.
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There are claims and links to scientific studies in this article.
https://www.skepticspath.org/blog/what-is-the-science-of-med...
Fascinating repy:
> I often have very strong knee-jerk reactions to these kind of comments.
OK, YOU have an overwhelmingly emotional reaction to these comments. That is not a very successful path to understanding anything.
> It's usually from some person that has not spent very much time meditating at all or invested much time around the various cultures which treasure and pride themselves in their meditative practices. It usually goes something like:
> "[Some kind of reasoning], therefore, there is no need to meditate."
I do not see anyone arguing anything remotely like this. Perhaps your "knee-jerk reactions" are distorting what people are saying.
There is a lot of scientific research/results based on actual measurable results and biology which supports the benefits of strength training. Can the same be said about meditation?
yes. why don't you bother to look some up instead of antagonizing others?
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I want to comment that in Buddhism, the role of meditation isn't (just) to reduce anxiety or manage emotion. Indeed if this was the role, then other techniques of anxiety reduction or emotion management could replace meditation.
Instead, the ultimate role of meditation is to experience your inner reality. And it's really the experience that is important, just thinking about it doesn't have the same effect
So experiencing your inner reality is the final goal in itself?
I thought that the point was to reduce suffering.
You experience reality to understand the true nature of reality, to see things as they are. This is what leads to reduced suffering
You also need to calm your mind, reduce your anxiety etc but as a prerequisite
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samatha-vipassan%...
Meditation as a form of relaxing is practicing Samatha, and meditation to see things as they are is Vipassana. in reality both work in tandem, but Vipassana is the goal. (Vipassana is Buddha's innovation here - meditation in other religions is more like Samatha)
The main thing is that learning about the true nature of things at an intellectual level isn't enough in Buddhism. It's, like.. there are parts of your mind that are unaffected by what you learn intellectually, you need to actually experience things yourself to influence your unconscious mind
Thinking about what meditation is, and practicing meditation are not the same.
The thinking mind cannot simulate its effects.
The thinking mind assumes it is the whole mind. Meditation reveals it to be a tiny subset. Which cannot experience or simulate its superset.
A discussion at the level of this subset is by definition limited.
Among other things, the practice changes the meaning of “I”.
Well there is metacognitive awareness allowing us to think and therefore speak about thinking on a meta level. However the absence of thinking is hard to describe.
"there is no problem to solve" is a thought.
It becomes insight if it actually feels true.
"It feels like there is no problem to solve" is a synonym of being relaxed.
I thought the entire point of meditating was to realize you don't need to constantly solve problems, not to solve all of them.
Very western version of meditation to view it as a tool to achieve something with.
"Very western version of meditation to view it as a tool to achieve something with."
Thats exactly what makes meditating so hard for westerners, just sitting, not actively doing anything, no external constant stimulation.
Meditation isn't an insight. It's a practice.
Your comment makes as much sense as saying that once you've moved the heavy weight to a new position there's no more need for weightlifting.
I dont understand that. I always assumed meditation is not a practice or an antipractice. There is no goal to reach. Nothing to gain.
It is a practice that leads, as a consequence, to insight. Insight is not information that might be read from a book, it is experience that uses observation to arrive at understanding and transformation. You can't just "decide to have" the experience without doing the work of transforming yourself through observation. People who have gone far in the practice do tend to say that there was never any goal to begin with, that they ended up where they started, but that's more of a metaphor than anything else. Someone who travels around the world and ends up where they started is in a very different place than someone who never left home.
It's a practice. There are benefits. It's not a cure-all. The goal is to be more in control and aware of your own thoughts and feelings. You achieve that by learning to turn off the "monkey mind" - the continuous stream of distracting thoughts and feelings which can lead us down paths which are not of our deliberate choosing and not necessarily beneficial to our wellbeing.
It is often said that if you go into meditation with a goal to improve yourself that you will probably be disappointed. I guess I would say that meditation is as much about unlocking your intuition as it is about anything else, so consciously trying to improve yourself through meditation does seem to miss the point of the practice.
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Correct. Meditation is really a state. Formal practices just aim to help you get there.
Meditation has many techniques. Similar to how people have many different motivations and programs when they have a regular gym practice. Strength is different to agility is different to flexibility.
For me a big factor is the way you become aware of the stress when it is absent for a short while. I felt a similar thing returning to work after the Christmas break. It's good to know about how you are feeling.