Comment by throwforfeds
3 days ago
> If this works, there must be some way to tune our meditation methods specifically for relaxing smooth muscle.... using awareness to track exactly how and where the body grips and lets go.
It's great that westerners are exploring these things, but I can't help but think the strong aversion people have for things not being "proven" by western science is holding everyone back. This is literally yoga and meditation practice and has been studied for at least a couple thousand years.
Even if we exclude the modern invention of yoga as exercise in the 20th century, there are seated practices of releasing these tensions in the body. It's not even framed in mystical terms, it's literally just opening the body and getting rid of discomfort, pain, and stress in the body so that you can sit and focus for longer periods of time in your formal meditation practice.
Even in the author's teacher's capital V Vipassana tradition, invented in the 20th century, it is known that the piti that arises even in the first stages of meditation can be directed. That weak piti is just the piloerection response, which is an autonomic response, and if you can control it it would seem to imply we of course have facility over things science assumes we have no control over.
The biggest challenge is that it's a very slow process and most people don't have the patience for it. I have been practicing Vipassana for 14 years, including all day long body awareness (so, not only on cushion, but basically integrating Vipassana to normal activities like work) and it's took close to a decade to be satisfied by the results. That being said, permanent relaxation of muscle is really what you gain from it. There have been period with faster developpement but there are up liits to progress. Notably, the release of muscle release all sort of chemicals in the blood streams, which would make my body smell during intense practice and if we progress too fast, we get bizarre side effects. For instance, relaxation of some of my muscles meant that other muscles in my legs had to be "trained" when walking, or I would be in pain for a while, etc, etc.
Science is not exclusive to western countries. In fact, I would argue that a lot of the basis from science is Eastern philosophy. It is merely a method for determining the validity of truth claims.
Science and eastern philosophy differ in epistemological objectives and methodological scope:
Science is characterized by objective empiricism; it relies on third-person observation, quantifiable data, and the principle of falsifiability to build a predictive model of the external, material world. Its goal is to establish "public" knowledge that remains true regardless of who is observing it.
In contrast, many traditions within Eastern philosophy are rooted in disciplined phenomenology or first-person inquiry. Rather than seeking to measure external objects, these traditions provide a systematic framework for investigating the nature of consciousness and the "felt" quality of experience from within.
While science seeks to explain the mechanisms of reality through a detached lens, Eastern philosophy seeks to realize the nature of being through direct, subjective realization.
Subject and object are originally grammatical terms, though. In Sanskrit grammar, there is no “Subject” or “Object,” there is the “Kartr” and “Karman,” the “thing doing the action” and the “thing being acted upon,” and this goes along with the distinction between “Akarmaka” and “Sakarmaka” verbs, those that are “without (transitive) action” and those that are “with (transitive) action.” This means that there are sometimes cases where, because the grammar is not restricted by a subject agreeing with an object, there are clauses without a “subject” (Kartr), because the intransitive verb is agreeing with an “object” that is not taking a subject or rather the subject is “abstractly implied” (hence the name, “Bhave Prayoga” or “Abstract Construction”). This is only possible because Sanskrit Grammar is based on a logic of action rather than one of internal/external, subject/object difference.
In a scientific world where we have already acknowledged that perception itself can change the quality of the objects observed, that the obsever himself stands within an economy of the material he is observing, why is there an insistence here on a strong subject/object distinction? I think this is only because of a misunderstanding of “oriental” philosophy against “western” philosophy. But there is a reason Oppenheimer qoutes the Bhagavad Gita, it wasn’t arbitrary—if you read the text yourself, you will find the distillation of the grammatical principles above as an ontology.
In the Gita, there is a “detached,” method of accessing being, but it is moreso reccomended for those who are not capable of living in the world, whose Dharma is not to live a life of activity. As Krishna tell Arjuna, nobody cannot avoid acting at any moment, the world is composed of myriads of actions and reactions, the results of which we cannot ever fully know and should live at a remove from. This would be an embrace of an “objective” universe, an unpredictable universe, a universe full of movement and energy—far more objective, I would say, far more immersed in the object, than any “subjective” understanding could possibly fulfill. But here there are no subjects, there are no objects, there are only, as Latour might’ve said (though he abandoned it later), actors and actants, there is only activity.
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> Science is characterized by objective empiricism; it relies on third-person observation, quantifiable data, and the principle of falsifiability to build a predictive model of the external, material world. Its goal is to establish "public" knowledge that remains true regardless of who is observing it.
That's only really true of the natural sciences. Cultural sciences (humanitas) are of a different kind. Here, we don't look for universal truths and laws but for meanings and interpretations. And they come from the Western philosophical tradition.
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The earliest mathematical knowledge comes from ancient India. Many would argue that India is the cradle of science which spread to the Middle East and Greece.
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> It's great that westerners are exploring these things ...
> This is literally yoga and meditation practice and has been studied for at least a couple thousand years.
> Even if we exclude the modern invention of yoga as exercise in the 20th century, there are seated practices of releasing these tensions in the body.
You are very clearly opposing eastern meditation practice and science, saying science held westerners back but let me give an example...
I've got a tense spot somewhere, I do practice meditation since a long time and I definitely can relax myself using breathing techniques etc. That's great.
But one of my very best friend lost, 15 years ago, both kidneys and had a kidney transplanted from his mom (she was compatible and willing to give one). As to my wife, she suffers from an auto-immune disease: but thanks to medication she lives a normal life (and thankfully doesn't have a reduced life expectancy).
So my questions is simple: you talk about "thousands of years". Easterners had "thousands of years" and they can... Release tension in the body?
Shall we now have a talk about science and ask the inverse question: weren't easterners held back by their meditation practice while westerners invented: MRI, X-ray, antibiotics, insulin, kidney transplantation, heart transplantation, artificial heart, in vitro fecondation, polio vaccine, anesthesia, chemotherapy, stethoscope, microscope, ...
And that's just a tiny list. I could go on and on. Versus... Relaxing tension in the body?
I'm not exactly sure who's been held back by what here.
> So my questions is simple: you talk about "thousands of years". Easterners had "thousands of years" and they can... Release tension in the body?
This is a common misconception among those used to modern “western” medicine: while “eastern” medicine does have a range of options to deal with existing medical conditions the emphasis is always on prevention (there’s a famous Chinese medical maxim along the lines of it being better to fight the enemy outside the city walls than inside) whereas Western medicine mostly pays lip service to the idea (for reasons that unfortunately mostly come down to money).
There is no denying that our modern medicine is superior in treating the immediate symptoms (which may well be life threatening) including surgery.
The relaxation exercises being discussed are really there just for the purpose of making sitting meditation effective, essential to stop the body getting in the way of the practice and that is all. In a way the body (and the associated work required to keep it in health) is seen as a necessary evil by those on the spiritual cultivation path.
I never said they're in opposition to each other. I'm an advocate of science and I think we should absolutely be studying what's going on with the body as we undertake these practices. If anything I find the Buddha's teachings on self-investigation and not taking any of his words at face value to be very compatible with scientific curiosity [1]. There is no "because I said so" on this path.
As I said elsewhere in the thread, what I take issue with is that many westerners try to ignore thousands of years of investigation and practice, to only waste a lot of time trying to come up with things on their own. And not even by following a map already laid out while collecting data or whatever, they're trying to discover the map on their own.
The author was contemplating an idea that is a pretty basic, known concept. Like absolutely, let's collect a bunch of data with some meditators doing various practices and see what's going on with transformations of smooth muscle over time. But let's not push away the millions of people that have done these practices just because they're Asian or wearing robes or talk about Nirvana/Samsara and that makes you feel uncomfortable.
I'm grateful to modern scientific discovery and I'm also grateful to all the teachers on this path that have helped liberate my mind. Both can be true at the same time. We shouldn't get caught up in thinking of things in binaries.
[1] https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.th...
> the strong aversion people have for things not being "proven" by western science
What does “western” have to do with anything? There is plenty of pseudoscience, snake oil and magical thinking in the west. I’d wish people were much more skeptical of anything not scientifically proven.
Or do you imply there is a racist component to it? That could certainly be true.
> There is plenty of pseudoscience, snake oil and magical thinking in the west
This is it exaclty. These folks always forget that it's not the only idea we've heard today. It's basic cost/benefit. This takes 45 minutes to an hour to try out. If it works you "feel better" where "better" is hard to define. Cost = 45 minutes. Benefit = Meh.
Since there are about 1 billion things in the world that claim to make me "feel better" at a cost of 45 minutes each I have to really narrow my focus. I can't spend 45 billion minutes for "Meh."
In my case this made enough sense that I tried it when I was young and liked it. A lot of folks spent those 45 minutes on something else that seemed more likely to succeed. It's perfectly rational.
Things that don’t get concrete results for people tend not to survive 2000+ years, like meditation, taichi/qigong/whatever; so i don’t think some things really need scientific proof. Even then, how do you scientifically prove if something makes you feel better who really cares if it’s x or y receptor or brainwave pattern or whatever?
This is simply an "Appeal to Tradition" fallacy. People do lots of things for thousands of years that are worthless, wrong, or pointless. However, this also doesn't mean that just because we've done these things for a long time that they are in fact pointless.
There are methods to prove subjective things like "feeling better." There is in fact a lot of research that shows that meditation and exercise like Taichi is good for you.
Astrology is more than 4000 years old, what concrete results did it provide?
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Forgot the ground rhino horn to make your dick hard. What's the thing shark fins are supposed to do? I can never remember.
Prayer has been around a lot longer than that, and no objective blind tests have ever been able to prove any verifiable results.
Longevity of ideas is not correlated with usefulness. Our belief systems are not optimized; they are, like genetic evolution, just 'good enough' to allow survival.
Like, praying? Or maybe one feels good after sincere prayers, perhaps…
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The problem is that Eastern medicine is also full of complete horse shit. How do you differentiate between the good and the bad without just reinventing from base principles?
Of course, and I wasn't arguing that we shouldn't have contemporary scientific inquiry into what's going on. The Buddha said that we should do the practice for ourselves and not follow it just because someone else said so, or because it's tradition. [1] It's great to get some fMRI imagery of what's going on in the brain with advanced meditators. We should study what's going on because we should be curious!
But what I do find to be a little misguided is what I pointed out from the author's statement. There is a tendency in western circles to push away everything and not only just try to recreate based on first principles, but push those first principles away as well. The author was pondering a question that millions before her have done the practice of, without looking to any of those millions for a guide. Instead, I'd say listen to them, practice it, and if it doesn't work, discard it.
[1] https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.th...
the Buddha taught critical thinking regarding the base teachings, an emphasis that was lost by many later schools of thought
https://youtu.be/47-aixLukSo
If only there were some objective, fact-based way to differentiate subjective opinion from real results... But we both know that's not possible; the only real answer is to blindly accept ALL medical theories as valid.
Many things have been practiced/studied for thousands of years - that alone isn't interesting or valuable imo.
What are the objective benefits of meditation - what is the exact/specific process and what specifically does it accomplish?
I can see how being in a silent reflective state and similar practices could have various effects and benefits (not that I know specifically what those are) - but what separates me zoning out in the shower/on the bus from actual meditation? How is 'guided' meditation when you're actively listening to someone else even the same thing?
Whenever I ask my meditating/'spiritual' friends about these things the response is basically vague undecipherable gibberish and allusions that it is unexplainable to someone like me who is not ready to accept the truths lol.
What does reading a great novel or starting a garden specifically accomplish? People do some things for reasons that aren't easily quantifiable. It seems to me that you are starting from the viewpoint that everything has to prove its worth before you accept it, even if millions of people before you have found it fulfilling and worthwhile, which does not seem productive.
If you had never read a book before, and someone was trying to convince you to try it, what could they point to that would fulfill all your criteria? Would it be enough to say it makes you smarter? That's not very specific. It sharpens your thinking? Makes you more empathetic? That would all seem like 'vague undecipherable gibberish' if you had no experience with it. They might resort to saying that it can connect you with a great dialogue that has been occurring for over two thousand years, but as you say, the fact that people have been doing it for thousands of years doesn't make it interesting or valuable.
Seeing a study that some part of the brain responds more quickly for up to 90 minutes after reading or that people with gardens live 0.28 years longer on average would not make me want to do those things more, because those are NOT the benefits of doing those things. You have to figure out what you're supposed to do with your one human life. Science is one tool, culture is another. Neither of them makes the other superfluous.
> What does reading a great novel or starting a garden specifically accomplish?
It accomplishes many things - specifically granting entertainment, pleasure, etc that practitioners like.
> It seems to me that you are starting from the viewpoint that everything has to prove its worth before you accept it
I'm starting with the viewpoint that there are literally thousands of various different practices out there have have existed for a long time and have been practiced by many people. Many of these are complete bullshit. How do you filter out the good from the bad/useless?
> even if millions of people before you have found it fulfilling and worthwhile
Millions of people have found many many different things fulfilling and worthwhile over the ages, some of these things we've since realized are bullshit/bad. Do you accept every single belief/practice based on how popular it has been?
> If you had never read a book before, and someone was trying to convince you to try it, what could they point to that would fulfill all your criteria?
They could say: it's entertaining/interesting/pleasurable, they could say that knowledge/insights are contained in books, that different/interesting perspectives and other people's thoughts are contained in books (which are objective facts), etc. Saying 'it makes you smarter' is vague and unconvincing.
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Very simply, meditation is an attempt at single-pointed concentration. It involves cultivating awareness of the mind's contents and the ability to let thoughts pass without fixation. "Zoning out in the shower" probably means something more like daydreaming, where any and all thoughts are permitted to exist without active control. Focusing intently on a difficult cognitive task ("flow state") is more akin to meditation than zoning out.
A lot of beginners are so bad at this that some amount of guiding back to the goal is helpful. Many can only go a few seconds without getting fixated on passing thoughts.
Practicing one's ability to focus on a single thing and reducing mind-wandering will improve one's capability for concentration.
You're talking about Samatha-vipassanā which is the cultivation of stable attention and mindfulness as two skills. Your skill can be measured by the nine stages of tranquility:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samatha-vipassan%C4%81#:~:text...
But this is only one form of meditation. There are others, such as Maitrī/mettā meditation.
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"immersion" as a better translation than "concentration", suggested by Sujato
(can't remember their exact chat about that EBT translation compared to Bodhi or Brahm in whichever of the miriad of Buddhist Society of Western Australia talk/retreat videos I heard it discussed)
e.g. in https://suttacentral.net/mn44/en/sujato
mindfulness of body sensation, feeling, thought and principle bringing enough equanimity to start ignoring it all really easy, though the moral aspect can't be separated because doing not wholesome actions will leave you thinking about them
That is a pretty convincing and intuitive take, thank you.
> What are the objective benefits of meditation - what is the exact/specific process and what specifically does it accomplish?
There is no one form of meditation, and each practice has different results, but the majority of them share proven reductions in anxiety, stress, depression, and improvements in all sorts of gauges of mental well being.
One of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism is the interdependence of all phenomena [1], and when you begin your practice you'll start seeing that when you sit, you might notice less daily anxiety, which might translate into better physical health. Or you might notice that being slightly less depressed makes you engage in your relationships with friends and family better. You might notice that your hips open up, which might mean less lower back pain.
The point being there are tons of positive benefits from a meditation practice that don't include some metaphysical nonsense that might be hard to take at face value. As my meditation teacher often emphasizes, if the practice doesn't deal with your day to day, quotidian problems of being alive, then it's just nice philosophy and nothing else. The Buddha taught that we should put first things first, and that's dealing with the suffering and stress of our lives. [2]
Also, "zoning out" is pretty much the opposite of meditation. Meditation is to be fully without distraction, whereas "zoning out" is giving in completely to the distraction.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Poisoned_Arrow
> How is 'guided' meditation when you're actively listening to someone else even the same thing?
Generally speaking, meditation shouldn't be interrupted by too many instructions. Most common is no instructions during meditation, or instructions only when a shift in practice is being done. Otherwise, most of the instructions are before starting meditation.
It’s very subtle and to be honest if you need to be sold on it it’s probably not going to help you much. It can be as simple as having half an hour where you can put everything (including yourself) down and stop poking at it, compounded over time there are some benefits, but yeah i don’t think it’s something that needs to be sold or gamified etc.
> if you need to be sold on it it’s probably not going to help you much
This seems like a red flag because it can be used to justify anything, even being in a cult. I think there probably are benefits to some of these things, but we shouldn't shut down when someone asks what the mechanism is. Perhaps they want to get some of those benefits, but want to go about it a different way, and therefore want to know how they might go about doing that.
Telling them that someone who wants to be "sold" on it isn't going to benefit just makes the whole thing seem less legit, IMO.
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Meditation can be a very subjective experience and the benefits are often not immediate clear to the person practising. Hence it is hard to articulate. Best thing one can do is to just give it a try. It is not for everyone though.