Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness
unreadyandwilling.comOn 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.
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.
"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.
Your Zen is showing :)
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.
What are the four noble truths, in short?
The relevant one in this case would be the 8-fold path, which has right mindfulness and right concentration as two of its steps.
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.
where can I read more about your point of view?
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,
"I learned like this from my teacher, a man who claims Supreme Enlightenment. "
And there it is. WOOOOOOOOOO
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.
[1] http://www.members.tripod.com/tathagata2000/
[2] http://www.members.tripod.com/tathagata2000/happiness_and_pe...
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.
e.g. his name, other followers, etc.
Extraordinary clams require extraordinary evidence.
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
Thanks! I will take a look.
"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.:
http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.com/2010/11/going-for-str...
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?
You seem to be equating enlightenment with omniscience. Are you not?
Please tell us what questions you are asking as a qualifier on whether or not someone is enlightened.
> 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
Look. You are not enlightened, so you cannot know what it is to be enlightened. Simple logic.
From what you just wrote, you seem to think possession of abilities or 'siddhis' means one is enlightened. Buddha stated putting those into reverence is an impediment on the way to enlightenment.
Overall, take a look at your position. You are clinging to conventional knowledge. You are speaking of things you claim knowledge of, but never experienced firsthand. You then use your incomplete, second-hand knowledge as a basis for what enlightenment is and how a being is to get there. You are spreading false knowledge and ignorance. Become enlightened beyond any doubt and then come tell people who is wrong and why you are right.
> Look. You are not enlightened, so you cannot know what it is to be enlightened. Simple logic.
I've only claimed that Tathagata is a truly Enlightened being and asked you to confirm what happened to him. But your logic is flawed. There are certain axiomatic qualities of Enlightenment, and one of them is realizing things in the actuality. Therefore, what an Enlightened being says about truth and actuality should be verifiable (as well as stated falsifiably). So there are certain non-trivial things that ordinary people can know about the state of and get from the teaching of an Enlightened Being, even if they can't yet see from the same level or have as much virtue.
The people who make claims that Enlightenment is not externally verifiable are usually practitioners of meditation or looking to sell you something.
> From what you just wrote, you seem to think possession of abilities or 'siddhis' means one is enlightened. Buddha stated putting those into reverence is an impediment on the way to enlightenment.
I'm not sure the formal meaning of siddhi, never heard the term, but that's probably not what I'm indicating. The term ability can be applied to a wide range of things. How are you using the term (what abilities are you indicating)?
> Overall, take a look at your position. You are clinging to conventional knowledge. You are speaking of things you claim knowledge of, but never experienced firsthand. You then use your incomplete, second-hand knowledge as a basis for what enlightenment is and how a being is to get there. You are spreading false knowledge and ignorance. Become enlightened beyond any doubt and then come tell people who is wrong and why you are right.
There are two categories we can put things in the world into: those that are visible and those that are invisible. To see the visible, we need to open our eyes and we need to learn about what exists and how it exists. To see something that is invisible, on the other hand, we need a principle. What is taught at universities, however, is just how to make logic, which can easily be fed different words or the wrong assumptions and can output the wrong result. There is no one at universities I've met who satisfactorily understands the principle of how the world is operated, so they cannot perceive things which are outside their own knowledge (that of human beings) or that which is derived from their own knowledge. That is why I sometimes may point out something which falls outside your field of vision. So I would like to point out that the accusations you've brought against me are actually more applicable to your situation.
Why do hot dogs come in packages of ten and hot dog buns come in packages of eight?
Mu.
> There are huge numbers of claims, but who among the multitudes has the evidence?
And here you are making all kinds of claims, without presenting a shred of evidence. Ponder on that.
That's not true.
Let's verify what you said.
If you quote me on something you can't find a shred of evidence of, I'll see if I can tell you what it is.
I don't have to find evidence for your claims, the burden is on you to support them. Anyone who says no one has ever attained enlightens through meditation is lying. I know he's lying because such a statement is literally impossible to support rationally and scientifically, no evidence can be provided for such a statement.
Don't make claims you can't provide evidence for, and most especially don't make claims that are impossible to provide evidence for. Learn the difference between matters of fact and matters of opinion. You are speaking of your opinions and presenting them as facts, facts require evidence, opinions do not.
Evidence can only support successful ways of becoming enlightened; positive assertions that are falsifiable. You may say this is known to work, or that is known to work. Evidence cannot say nothing else has ever worked.
You also claimed enlightened beings must be able to rattle off an answer to any question of what's happening in reality. Find another word, that is not the accepted meaning of enlightenment, you are trying to redefine it to fit your masters own extreme definition of the word, one so extreme it only includes him and Buddah.
> Anyone who says no one has ever attained enlightens through meditation is lying. I know he's lying because such a statement is literally impossible to support rationally and scientifically, no evidence can be provided for such a statement.
This is where there is a difference between your level and my level of understanding about the world.
What you said about knowing that someone who makes a non-falsifiable statement is a liar, is actually a lie. It's not only the fact that you didn't understand the statement (and therefore can't accurately judge if it's falsifiable), and besides the fact that you yourself do not know if there will be anyone in the future who manages to prove the statement (you're making the same mistake you're pointing out), but there's another, more essential reason that I know you don't know what you're talking about.
An apple tree only knows how to produce apples because that is what is encoded in its nature (origin). There is nothing in the world that shows some kind of behavior or result that it doesn't already have inside its nature.
The reason I can say confidently here that the practice of meditation does not lead to enlightenment and that no truly enlightened being would teach that it does, is the simple fact that meditation has a certain effect (result) on human beings (which sometimes differs slightly within small boundaries depending on individual, unless the person is already enlightened himself), and that effect on human beings is orthogonal to that of enlightenment as well as nirvana. Meditation will never be able to produce an Enlightened Being, and no one who had Supreme Enlightenment came out of any schools or religions, because they are trying to go in opposite directions - practicing meditation can create karma, but you have to remove all your karma to experience nirvana and have the possibility of being Enlightened. That is to say that Enlightenment (also known as salvation), as well as nirvana (liberation) are in the opposite direction of the goals of meditation (no suffering, darkness/closing your eyes, stopping the flow of your mind/one-pointed concentration, letting external spirits come in or practicing compassion for them, abandoning oneself, not having any attachments, and practicing not to be reborn again). The result of Enlightenment is that you save yourself, and can begin to save others. The result of meditation is that you kill your soul and die forever. So there are some basic things you've learned from others about Buddha's teaching that don't match the reality of life, and that in itself lets me know it's not the teaching of a real Buddha. Do you yourself honestly believe that a living Buddha would teach people the way to die forever? The point of him coming to the world was to show us that we are our own saviors and are capable of saving ourselves.
Your reply is so full of wowo nonsense that I won't bother to rebut it piece by piece but I'll end with this. You completely fail to understand evidence based thinking and falsifiability and thus your opinions are not remotely rational, they are emotional. You need to learn to stop trying to explain yourself, and start providing evidence that anything you say is true. You just look like a crazy person to me; I doubt I'm alone in this assessment.
I'm not interested in your opinions of why you're right, I'm interested in evidence of your claims. If you don't have that, you aren't worth my time.
> You need to learn to stop trying to explain yourself, and start providing evidence that anything you say is true. You just look like a crazy person to me; I doubt I'm alone in this assessment.
> I'm not interested in your opinions of why you're right, I'm interested in evidence of your claims. If you don't have that, you aren't worth my time.
You are not alone in your 'assessment', sir, and to be quite honest, I gave you what I consider to be logically sound evidence that meditation can't lead to Enlightenment, but you won't find the evidence of this statement from me since I don't meditate. Therefore I am asking you to go look at what really happens to people who practice meditation and then confirm how what they can see, how they behave, and what kind of problems they have, are different from some people in human history who really had opened their eyes completely. If you don't want to, that's your loss. But even if I show you evidence by bringing the people in front of your eyes, if you don't want to confirm the axioms I set forward nor check the results of them, if you just reject me without confirming, then how can I be sure you properly understood my meaning in the first place?
Science and philosophy are two sides of the same coin, and you can't recognize evidence until you can understand what it means. I regret that I couldn't have had a proper conversation with you.
> I gave you what I consider to be logically sound evidence that meditation can't lead to Enlightenment
You did no such thing. You just told me why you think that, based on nonsense woowoo about karma, rebirth, and spirits; that is not logic, and it is certainly not rational. You've given me zero reason to believe anything you say.
> but you won't find the evidence of this statement from me since I don't meditate
Then you shouldn't be speaking with authority on the matter; you clearly know nothing about it.
> the goals of meditation (no suffering, darkness/closing your eyes, stopping the flow of your mind/one-pointed concentration, letting external spirits come in or practicing compassion for them, abandoning oneself, not having any attachments, and practicing not to be reborn again).
You've clearly confused the practice of meditation with certain religions that use the practice as part of their woo woo nonsense.
Meditation isn't about any of that; meditation is simply about learning to control the tool that is your mind rather than letting it control you. It is the practice of awareness without the incessant chattering of the mind. It is about learning that you are not your thoughts, nor are you a slave to them. There's nothing mystical about it.
> Therefore I am asking you to go look at what really happens to people who practice meditation and then confirm how what they can see, how they behave, and what kind of problems they have, are different from some people in human history who really had opened their eyes completely.
I didn't ask you to give me homework, I ask for evidence that your claims about meditation are true. You've provided none. If you can't back up claims you make, don't make them.
> Science and philosophy are two sides of the same coin, and you can't recognize evidence until you can understand what it means.
No they are not. Science is a philosophy, one based on evidence and logic. None of which you have shown here.
> I regret that I couldn't have had a proper conversation with you.
I don't believe you do. I believe you regret being asked for evidence of your claims.
What about?
"No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation in human history."
And:
"Buddha himself never claimed he was enlightened through meditation."
Look at:
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.
Hope this helps
How can you know what Enlightenment is very correctly? does that mean that you are yourself Enlightened? If so, that would explain how can you sanction everyone else's Enlightenment, like all of Zen monks, etc.
Also, how do you know that indeed a Buddha comes every 3000 years? where is the Truth pointing to that?
I only try to report exactly what I've learned directly from a living Enlightened Being - I'm not claiming qualification to see and teach the Truth. I've been studying this for a while, so I get better and better at recognizing people's questions when I encounter the particular cases, but always make sure to tell them that this is what I learned from the master. Monks in today's world never wanted to learn from a living Buddha, because he never lets people tell even a little lie in front of him. Instead, the monks stay with the dead Buddha because he never scolds them and just smiles..
So, about the period that an Enlightened Being comes to the world, there are a couple things you need to know.
The first thing is that an Enlightened being only comes to the world in certain circumstances. The last one we know about is Gautama Buddha. There was no one among the religious practitioners of his day who knew the correct teaching and right way to attain Enlightenment. They all had quite varied practices and did some strange stuff. Because nobody knew, that was why he had to come teach and search on foot for 45 years for someone wanted to listen to him.
Gautama Buddha, after he taught, said that his teaching would stay and brighten the world for about a thousand years. The period after that thousand years is when his teaching begins to disappear. And finally, the third 'ending' period after that is when his teaching has disappeared completely. It's only when Buddha's teaching has disappeared that an Enlightened being comes to the world again to reveal the truth.
How did you realize that your master was a living Enlightened Being? can you give the specific questions and answers that you used to recognize him as such?
Many of my questions were simply answered outright in his teachings
* What is truth?
* What is happiness and what is peace? How to get them?
* What is Enlightenment?
* How to recognize an Enlightened being?
* What is nirvana?
* What is eternal life and how to get it? How to save one's life? How to save the world?
* What is destiny?
* What is reality?
* What is life and how does it work?
* What is good teaching and what is bad teaching?
* How to tell the future? How to see the present? How to derive correct information from records of the past?
* How does the energy in the human body work and by what details in what process does a consciousness exist and drive a human body?
* What does the term god mean and what's the relationship (if any) between gods and human beings?
* What is gravity, how is it formed/generated? What is the relationship between gravity and other fields? What is space-time made out of?
* How did the third eye form?
* How to live well?
* What is leadership?
I actually had lots of questions, and it's not only his answers that convinced me but his dedication despite the hardships he endured carrying out his mission
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.
Is this derived from a particular definition of enlightenment? I'm not really familiar with the buddhist religious texts etc.a truly enlightened being can point out things in reality exactly as they are and can tell the law of how the world works.Good question.
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.
Interesting discussion! Thanks!
If you are interested in Blueprint's (Paul Shapiro) theory, and check out the "true" Buddha, you can find more info here:
http://www.members.tripod.com/tathagata2000/
Paul has even made a ipphone app for him here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/enlightenment-lite/id449546123?m...
No?
Why couldn't anyone be enlightened?
The Buddha said the true nature of all beings is that of enlightenment.
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.
You are obviously cherry picking.
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.
Again, you are cherry picking.
Why would you say?
"Most of the time they just wrote down what they wanted, or from their own ideas and opinions."
When your master's webpage at:
http://www.members.tripod.com/tathagata2000/questions_and_an...
Says:
"What is the proof about a Tathagata? > The proof is in the Buddhist scripture."
Seems contradictory, no?
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,that is true (I'm most familiar with Nichiren Buddhism so I can only speak for that). Every living being's true nature is that of enlightenment.
Does anyone know the simple principle? Is it the golden rule?
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.
"but it's necessary to learn from an Enlightened being directly"
Then how did Buddha himself learn it?
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
Regarding Gautama : you know this how ? Were you there when this (allegedly) happened ?
Could you make your question more concrete? (What do you mean by "this"?)
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.
Those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know.
The Way that can be told is not the eternal Way.
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.
> No one has attained Enlightenment through Zen nor meditation
Maybe because no one has attained "Enlightment", whatever that means. Go say the rosary.
> whatever that means
More profound than you realize. When you start to understand that, then you'll be closer.
It's really not that complicated or mystical.
I understand it perfectly. You're a heathen. Submit to God.
> 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.
That's one of the points of meditation, though, is it not? To "perceive things as they actually are in reality"?
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
Thanks for the reply...
> 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?
Thanks
You could come to realize the nature of reality, in Buddhist thought. The three marks of reality in Buddhism are anatta(not-self), annica(impermanence), and dukkha(suffering/dissatisfaction).
The basic teachings of Buddha say that all things share those attributes.
So, in practical terms, all things will pass, and things aren't necessarily what they seem, and attachment causes suffering. Even more practically -- don't take everything so seriously.
When describing something in reality, we have to have some substantial matter to discuss, but I couldn't find any concrete things in what you said. For the sake of discussion, I'll mention that I can also discount some of them.
* Not-self: I is myself, even though what are in myself can be changed. I tend to produce results of a certain kind, indicating some coherent originator of those results (my self). Could you elaborate on a very concrete example (something which can be verified) of not-self?
* Impermanence: Things which are not true are impermanent, but the truth itself is fixed and permanent.
* Dukkha: This is the most dangerous trap in Buddhism. It's not a fact of reality that we have to suffer. If we don't have good society, nobody can be guaranteed to be happy. There are ways in Buddha's teachings to be happy. However, Buddhist monks often use this in a bad way and teach that people can be free from all their suffering if they meditate sufficiently and properly - and that this is Nirvana. But that's absolutely wrong. Nirvana does not mean cessation of suffering. Every living creature must receive influence from the environment, and so even a man who experienced Nirvana many times still suffers from things like hunger and the cold. What is different about him is that he has no anguish and illusion about them, and so the hate disappears.
"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:
https://springerlink3.metapress.com/content/e85w20n04r3n7502...
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.
But buddhists generally aren't vague, they are extremely expressive about what they are talking about. Are you refering to something specific?
I've heard a lot of Buddhists talk about mind being separate from body. If you push them on it they get very vague very quickly.
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.)
This is rather vague. When you get specific it stops being spiritual. For example, I have decided I will go to the gym tonight. I haven't gone yet, so clearly my mind is aware of my decision to go the the gym before my body actually goes to the gym.
Of course, you didn't mean that. You meant something like "if I'm driving my car, and an animal runs in front of my, my body reacts before I am consciously aware of it". This is true, but I'm not sure what this has to do with spirituality. What is "spirituality"?
"What is 'spirituality'?"
The best definition I've been able to come up with is that spirituality is basically the relationships you have with yourself, with others, your work, the food you eat, your religious practices, etc. To me at least spirituality isn't especially vague, it's something that you could probe and measure (to some extent), not unlike the social graph on Facebook.
"You meant something like 'if I'm driving my car, and an animal runs in front of my, my body reacts before I am consciously aware of it'."
More like my legs started walking on their own without any conscious input from me.
"This is true, but I'm not sure what this has to do with spirituality."
The kinds of answers you give to the relationship questions I posed above are largely dependent on your worldview and how you think the universe works. After meditating you start to experience the world differently at the experiential level, and because of this how you view the universe naturally changes. And because of this your view on all those spirituality type questions I started to enumerate in my definition also changes.
I know what you mean. It's all about the underlying patterns and concepts and their relations to one another.
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.
For anyone thinking of checking this out, try a sensory deprivation tank --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank
Amazing experience. Similar to how OP describes.
@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!
Can you recommend any tutorials or books about this type of meditation? I'm curious.
Kind of sounds a bit like lucid dreaming, or astral projection.
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.
" We might matter to each other, but to the universe (which is mostly empty) our existence is worthless, useless, meaningless, purposeless."
I respectfully disagree. You ARE the universe. You are it! What else could you be? What else is there? There is no you apart from it.
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:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/07/nobodys-going-to-he...
Problem is that you might not be aware that your story has spun out of control and is heading down the wrong side of the road.
Meditation is designed to help you see if that is the case...and the fact that stories are just stories and not reality.
Perhaps not as scientifically minded, I still think Alan Watts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts) and his accompanying lectures (e.g. http://archive.org/details/BuddhismAsDialogue) are a great introduction to eastern philosophy from a westerner's perspective.
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.
It's a huge, dense book, about 900 pages.
The iOS app containing a large number of his talks, while pricey, is very good.
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.
Meditation won't make you happy. It will help you deal with stressful situations so you can make better decisions.
And that as a result makes you happier.
Hate to be that guy - but is there good scientific evidence for your claims?
There seems to be quite a lot of research on this topic, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation
This article: "Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits. A meta-analysis" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15256293 seems to be relevant to your question.
Of course the mere existence of articles does not prove anything. Caution advised :)
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? Now, do share.
"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?
Stillness in every action and no-action.
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.
The benefit is cognitive defusion. That means you gain the ability to observe your thoughts instead of identifying yourself with them.
This gives you more control (because you also learn to accept whatever comes up) and as a result more happiness.
Check this video with a step by step guide how to meditate I did. It's pretty easy and everyone with a bit of patience can benefit from doing it.
http://jayuhdinger.com/chapters/chapter-2-practical-lesson-m...
Stated more simply: "you are not your thoughts"
>*"Why Meditation Doesn't Directly Increase Happiness"
Because there are no magic pills?