Since there have already been many thoughtful comments about meditation, I will just add that when I was in India a number of years ago I saw many billboards for Nirodh (the term used in the article and translated as “cessation”).
Were those billboards ads for meditation training, you ask? No… they were ads for a popular brand of condom.
That’s all I’ve got.
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ish
Thanks for this. I have read a little about ‘transcendental’ meditation and it seems to me the logic underlying it is in fact that ‘occupy the mind with a meaningless sound’ is a good way to get out of your thoughts. I like your humming variation. If I try again, that’s exactly what I’ll try.
Can you tell me why you do it?
I have no problem with the idea of not expecting anything from any given session of meditation. But if I’m going to make something into a habit, I have to think there’s some point to the habit overall. Otherwise I have a thousand other things I could do with that 15 minutes that do get me closer to something I want and can clearly articulate.
Even if you go into each session expecting nothing, clinging to nothing, is there some benefit to meditation overall?
Could you follow your Buddhist beliefs without meditating, or does meditating bring it all together in some way?
If you stopped being a Buddhist tomorrow (like if you got conked on the head and forget all of it except the technique of meditating), do you think you’d continue meditating?
Can you tell me why you do it?
Why I meditate? I was in a special ed class (experimental stuff, mostly) back in Jr. High where we studied, among other things, meditation. We used a few common biofeedback machines (bp/heart rate monitors, galvanic skin response, brainwave-monitoring), which do help in the whole getting started bit, but which are absolutely unnecessary, however cool. Since I had that in my mental toolbox, when I had a very stressful job (managing hundreds of employees all around the world) I used it to get to sleep at night, mostly a combination of focused muscle tension/relaxation exercises and the aforementioned meditation technique. Nowadays, I mostly use it for anger management, handling grief, and similarly intense negative emotional events, though it also come in handy when camping with people who snore.
Yes. But again, it’s like exercising. The “work” isn’t where the magic happens. The work is just the work. The magic happens everywhere else.
No. Meditation / contemplation is core to Buddhism and cannot be separated from it. There are a wide variety of Buddhist schools out there and different ways to accomplish enlightenment and different definitions of what that means, but all of them involve meditation of some form. Mindfulness as a practice was taken from Buddhism and had the religious / philosophical elements stripped out, not the opposite. I think the mass commercialization of it in the past few years has created an “expectation” from it, like you’re purchasing a product. But that isn’t how it works. It’d be like taking communion from the christian church and practicing it, and then expecting something from it.
Maybe, but this is one of those random situations that may or may not happen. I probably would. And then I would probably be a Buddhist again within short order. Buddhism isn’t like a western religion in the sense that there’s a series of steps to take. It’s a mindset, philosophy, and religion all wrapped into a cohesive package for me. If I stopped being one suddenly, a lot of my decisions and choices would basically make me back into one immediately.
The magic happens everywhere else.
Makes sense. But what is the magic?
If I work out, the magic is that I get stronger, fitter, maybe calmer, more flexible, etc. etc. What is the magic you get from meditation?
Lots of people in this thread have referred to getting better sleep, for example, but something tells me there might be more to it for you. I’m interested in your take specifically. Of course, it’s okay if you don’t feel comfortable answering this.
I may not be typical but the magic is you are exercising your muscle of attention and presence in the moment. This means that instead of lying in bed anxious about hypotheticals you can release yourself from that and go to sleep or whatever. Move on and not be trapped in feedback loops by breaking them. Keeping a practice keeps this muscle in shape.
Sure. The magic for me is I’m more aware, more part of the world I’m in, more attentive to it and its whims. It also means I’m less affected by the ebbs and flows of things, that I don’t jump from outrage to outrage , riding emotional highs and lows as if they are the best and worst things to ever happen to me all in a few short moments. I see my emotions as what they are, sometimes fleeting things, and events in a similar manner. I recognize better the interdependent nature of all life, indeed, of all things in general.
The magic for me is kind of a spacer in between my emotions and the physical response of those emotions.
That’s not to say I’m a vulcan or something and don’t experience emotions, but it is to say that when I feel myself getting angry or worked up at something I actually have an opportunity to quiz myself and ask if it’s really worth being angry/upset/etc. It allows me the ability to , basically, stop time and be part of the universe without worrying about everything all the time.
That’s the magic for me.
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