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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 15, 2017 - 10:17pm PT
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Conflicting messages here from the meditation people. We science/math types occasionally present a non-uniform appearance, but not to the degree meditators do.
The "science" of meditation seems to be far more loosely defined than the physical sciences. And where the two attempt to merge, as at the Institute of Noetic Science, things get very messy indeed. Hilbert spaces, virtual particles and no-thingness is another example.
JL is apparently distressed that his lot is seen as cast with the Duck's. And Jan (correctly, in my naive opinion) chides those who would attempt to do more with meditation than is appropriate.
Is there no middle ground that is in the least bit productive?
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Oct 16, 2017 - 04:35am PT
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jgill
Is there no middle ground that is in the least bit productive?
The Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique has been taught by Maharishi ... Benson claims that his technique achieves the same results as Maharishi's TM.
for more see on natural stress release vs. meditation
http://www.natural-stress-relief.com/stress/transcendental-meditation.htm
Benson can be largely credited for demystifying meditation and helping to bring it into the mainstream, by renaming meditation the “Relaxation ..
For more on the relaxation response:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/heart-and-soul-healing/201303/dr-herbert-benson-s-relaxation-response
jgill
And Jan (correctly, in my naive opinion) chides those who would attempt to do more with meditation than is appropriate.
And from the technique of Natural Stress Relief:
Actually this resonance is able to “clean up” the nervous system, eliminating what in physics would be called “residual background noise”, and that in psycho-physiological terms appears as “stress”.
Unfortunately, this connections between physics, physiology and psychology is not well known among scientists, but it has shown to be able to explain the effectiveness of this technique.
http://www.truthabouttm.org/truth/tmresearch/comparisonoftechniques/relaxationresponse/index.cfm
This reference lists studies of comparison among the various meditation & relaxation techniques.
Yoga, Zen
Many of the early studies on meditation were on traditional Yoga and Zen meditation techniques, which do appear to produce a generalized reduction in sympathetic nervous system activity, 29-34 as Wallace has pointed out. 7 However, Wallace also noted that there were important differences in techniques, e.g., the non-habituation of the EEG alpha blocking response in Zen monks compared to loss of the alpha blocking in some of the yogis. 7, 29, 30 These studies were on very few subject, sometimes just one, and most studies did not have control groups. Moreover, the subjects were Yoga experts and Zen masters of ten to twenty years practice, following a religious way of life,
and their generalization to the Western lifestyle is questionable.
From NSR to Zen is there any difference in outcome? 40 years of sitting ....
And for the Duck: The Relaxation Response is a helpful way to turn off fight or flight response and bring the body back to pre-stress levels.
And yet something other than meditation -- Flow -- maybe the most secular of all techniques?
Flow is a state of meditation— of mindfulness – that you’re experiencing not while sitting quietly, but while fully and completely absorbed in an activity.
another take on Flow than Csikszentmihalyi
https://mrsmindfulness.com/how-you-can-enter-mindfulness-in-4-simple-steps/
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Oct 16, 2017 - 09:29am PT
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People are like dogs with a bone when it comes to something they think they've wrapped their brains around in 15 minutes.
The story of dopamine is a story of the sun's energy in our world. Dopamine is merely an exquisite proxy for solar energy. It is just one of the many key players in the complex matrix of life on planet Earth.
What would our planet be without energy from the sun?
Anyone?
Werner?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 16, 2017 - 11:29am PT
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Dingus McGee,
"From afar" refers to your apparent fascination with meditation by way of 3rd person reports. One of the challenges is that "meditation" is a huge field, and basing an evaluation on the subject, by way of global statements, is like asking a climber about climbing. The answer will be relative to the person's background and experience, ranging from alpine, to bouldering to freesoloing to big walling and any "answer" will be more about that person than about climbing - or meditation - pe se.
Why don't you just go to a local Vapassana outfit and take a few classes, then you can leave off trying to unpack a map about it and try it on for size, directly and personally.
Many people are shocked with how little control they have over their attention, but even beginners can usually get things out of the kind of distraction free, objective observing of their own process, which otherwise just chugs along pretty much on auto pilot.
But again, such adventures are not for everyone, as the same thing can be said for music, math, literature, birding, painting and any of the other diverse practices we humans do.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 16, 2017 - 01:21pm PT
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Dingus thinks he can figure everything with just Google.
He also does a lot of mental projections from his own runaway mind onto the world outside of himself.
The gross materialist spends all their time studying everything but their own selves.
The analogy is they study the machine and never even get to the driver itself due to their illusion and poor fund of knowledge.
They actually believe they are the material body they are in.
That is the root of their fatal mistake unbeknownst even to them.
The defect is not science, not religion not mind not the brain not gross materialism but actually their false identification as mental speculators
that the self (the living being) is the gross physical material and subtle material body (mind) ........
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Oct 16, 2017 - 03:48pm PT
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Largo,
Why don't you [Dingus McGee] just go to a local Vapassana outfit and take a few classes, then you can leave off trying to unpack a map about it and try it on for size, directly and personally.
Dear John, I have heard the likes of your line above from Christians. They say if only you had faith you would know or even more analogous to your line, if you would just pray you would know & see the ways of the Lord. But as for character Paul has never suggested I do the likes of what you say but with Christianity.
FYI in Dec 1972 I went to a place in Bezerkley, CA on 1670 Dwight Way. At that time I knew very well how to do what they were doing having tried it on for size, directly and personally sometime before this visit. Around that time Hendrix released, Are You Experienced
"From afar" refers to your apparent fascination with meditation by way of 3rd person reports.
Fascination? Absolutely, you might think of me as having a beginners )science( mind? Some have said if you meet the Buddha on the road Kill Him.
The Duck,
Dingus thinks he can figure everything with just Google.
Presumptuous, Werner. I knew of the Benson & Wallace meditation studies in 1974. I do not get my ideas from the Bhagavad Gita.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 16, 2017 - 04:47pm PT
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Dear John, I have heard the likes of your line above from Christians.
---
This is one of the most persistent misconceptions of them all per meditation, though I have never, anywhere on this thread, proposed meditation as a spiritual practice, nor yet a religious one. Sam Harris has clarified a lot in this regards. Most of the people I know who are serious meditators are atheists having no interest in religion, which involves worship, beliefs, faith, and all the rest. None needed here.
If you look objectively at any viable meditation practice, what you see, at bottom, is an attempt to simply observe what your actual lived experience IS. At some level, if you are in a deductive practice like I have, the point is to keep peeling back all beliefs, concepts, notions, preconceptions, ideas, feelings, memories, and so forth, so this works in the exact opposite direction of the "line you have heard from Christians," and personally, the accusation is not only simplistic, but absurd, and flies in the face of the seriousness I gave you per your inquires.
The reason I recommended Vapassana (which is NOT my practice) is that it is largely secular and it's a pretty user friendly route, unlike Zen or other practices which are talked about but rarely practiced owing to the slippery and ascetic nature of the work.
It's a curious thing how from the outside, people want to look at self observation as a "religious" practice, when the methods used are dealing with the building blocks of consciousness itself: Awareness, focus, attention, etc. Projecting "religion" onto this is a statement about you, not the practice.
That much said, misconceptions die hard, as do beliefs. This brief into to meditation (and common misconceptions) might help clear the air. Any number of people and provide insight about how to learn about self observation sans ANY religious associations. Here's a taste.
The two things most any experienced meditator can say about meditation is that whatever preconceptions they had going in are usually (and thoroughly) dashed after a period of practice, and the trajectory of where the practice would take them is profoundly unknown even after decades of serious study.
Perhaps the strongest preconception we all drag into the practice is the notion of narrative - that is, the belief that our fundamental nature or basic reality can best be explored by way of an evolutionary progression starting with a beginning (birth), followed by the breadth of our physical lives (middle), and closed out by death (the ending).
We began - the thinking goes - as a dynamic combination of blank slate and genetic predispositions which over time are fashioned by the environment "producing" a self that has certain characteristics. "Knowing they self," as the old saw goes, would therefore involve a discursive investigation of these elements, gathering the relevant facts and figures together into a kind of global self-portrait that we could come to "know." What's more, the "what" we came to know would disclose a somewhat accurate and relatively complete schema of who we are, and what it means to be a human being in this time and space.
Anything lying outside the temporal narrative would, according to this belief system, be merely imagined, which often is heard in the phrase, "He only thinks he is this or that..." but in fact the narrative, and specifically, a naturalistic quantification of the factors involved (including biology, psychology, etc.) is what the person REALLY is. They just don't know it.
Another common projection is that meditation is axiomatically aligned with religious practices. This is true if you join a religious group who practice meditation, but emphatically NOT true if meditation is taken up as a secular vehicle of self-observation - as most American currently do. Conflating ALL meditation with religion is one of the broadest misconceptions we still find dogging the work, and one of the first notions to be done to death during secular practice.
A last and common error is to likewise consider meditation as a psychological exercise seeking relaxation states. While a relaxed nervous system is prerequisite to most any focused work on any imaginable topic, believing this is the end game is only an uneducated opinion from those lacking any first hand experience. But again, conflating religion and relaxation drills with meditation remain go-too evaluations of people in the dark about actual, secular practice.
While meditation practices vary school to school, they generally work in one of two directions: a systematic striving AFTER some experience or insight that is believed to be missing at the outset, or a striping away of cognitive and psychological accretions we all take on over time, a reductive process of peeling the onion, so to speak, and coming to encounter what remains. This later tact is aiming at increasingly fundamental aspects of existence.
Prior to practice, most of us are prone to think of fundamentals as atomic level stirrings in the brain. This is the bedrock - or so goes the belief. So for many, a starting point is not to challenge this discursive belief, but rather to start taking a look at what thinking is all about - at the level of thinking itself. Not surprisingly, from afar, from a purported 3rd person cognitive vantage, the proposition sounds doubtful, as it should. Perhaps only those push on who have a cellular level curiosity and skepticism about the authority of their own thinking.
The first shocker is immediately know to all beginners. That is, while we normally have little problem holding our attention on EXTERNAL tasks or points of interest, when it comes to attentively observing our in INTERNAL subjective process, virtually no beginner can hold focus for more than brief periods without the mind unconsciously drifting off into this thought or that memory or getting derailed by that sensation or feeling or planning for tomorrow or next year.
Once you can stabilize attention not to drift (which for some may require years) you can either start seeking this or that state or experience, or work in the opposite direction and start breaking your enmeshment to states and various layers of thought, etc. This is a kind of trance breaking process, and the discursive trance runs deep. This is not to say discursive thinking wrong, only that most of us have no experience of observing ourselves without evaluating. This merely keeps the adventure at the level of our current thinking and understanding, though the reasons this is so are only known once the trace of evaluating is broken.
The interesting thing about the later tact is that SOME of the process precludes the chance of being wrong or "misinterpreting the data." For example, you cannot be mistaken about holding an open focus - that is, remaining aware of the forest, so to speak, as opposed to individual trees. Put differently, you will know, without a doubt, when you are in open focus, and the contention that you "only believe" you are in open focus, but are in fact narrow focused on a thought or feeling, is plainly absurd. The role of a teacher, and in peer review, is to keep moving the student toward those encounters to which there can be no doubt, and the core of the process does NOT involves affirming the existence of things (for which we can be mistaken), in the normal usage of the word, but in the opposite direction, ever moving below the articles of perception, including perception itself.
Discursive thought can quite naturally take you only a few feet down that path, but it will always be there trying to frame the encounter in terms it can get hold of in order to be "right."
Of course once you have some detachment from thinking, the contention that whatever you encounter is itself only a thought becomes a kind of howler - but we can rarely if ever see why from the outside, while thinking about it.
It is at this point of the adventure that views from the outside are of little value. And ironically, it's just at this point that the adventure really gets lift off.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 16, 2017 - 05:05pm PT
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Discursive thought can quite naturally take you only a few feet down that path, but it will always be there trying to frame the encounter in terms it can get hold of in order to be "right."
I think you give "discursive thought" too much life of its own. Sure, it will, "always be there," but I don't think that that many of us see it as the only point of view.
Analytic thought is one way to sort out things we can trust from things we can't. Direct experience can do much the same, but very little in this world is beyond any question of doubt.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 16, 2017 - 05:13pm PT
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The issue is more per your delivery and the way you proselytize your views.
Bullsh#t, Dingus. I have to say it simply, not to be mean spirited, but because you once more have dragged in religions terms that in no wise fit what I have ever actually said.
"Proselytize" means "to induce someone to convert to one's faith. 2 :to recruit someone to join one's party, institution, or cause.
When I say secular meditation involves no faith quotient, you nevertheless insist on offing me as a person pimping faith. What's more, I have repeatedly said that meditation is NOT for everyone or even the vast majority of people, who can only value their own discursive processes. In fact I have discouraged people from even considering practicing Zen, or other stuff because the chance of them staying with it or reaping benefits are so remote.
My entire cause for ever mentioning meditation is that the secular practice of same is so full of misconceptions - virtually always drawn from the outside - that clarification is required just to clean away all the bullshit beliefs.
Another reason is that many are now understanding that the science of mind will require multidisciplinary approaches, and that the bus has already passed those still clinging to a kind of fundamentalist belief in naturalism. People like Sam Harris, who have one foot in both camps, are showing the way. In the meantime, demystifying meditation is required.
But at no time have I ever made a pitch that people should get out there and do the right thing and join me in the Zendo. I discourage that, as a matter of fact, and have said so on many occasions. There are, however, people like Dingus McGee who repeatedly bring up meditation, along with a truckload of misconceptions - sort of like someone living in Mali talking about living in California based on watching episodes of Baywatch - the descriptions are wonky and deserve comment.
But it matters little to me if you or anyone else takes up meditation. Why would it? Anyone who sticks with the work does so because they want to. So far as I'm concerned, encouraging people to meditate is like encouraging people to climb uprotected flares and off widths. If you're so disposed - go for it. Otherwise, don't bother.
Is that clear enough on where I stand?
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 16, 2017 - 05:16pm PT
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The issue is more per your (Largo) delivery and the way you proselytize your views, not the content of your, beliefs.
You people are a bunch a pussies!
OMG !!! he's proselyting OMG !!!
The gross materialists proselytize 24/7 long with their so-called science is god and their belief their science is all in all for everything.
Same gig same delivery, hypocrites .....
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 16, 2017 - 05:37pm PT
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many are now understanding that the science of mind will require multidisciplinary approaches...
and yet you NEVER speak to the evolutionary psychology approach or else post to the simple benefits of SIMPLE introspection as a practice.
(FYI, I've been earnestly introspecting since I was ten years old, lol. Which, btw, was before my first ever serious crush on a girl and before that striking, abrupt mood change that I felt that accompanied my first ever orgasm, lol. WTF?!)
Instead, and it seems a thousand times over now, at this point, that when you are asked directly about these alternative approaches or POVs to a more comprehensive, overarching if not better understanding of the mental life, you deflect, go on sabbatical for a week and or "shuck and jive".
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1593650&msg=3017797#msg3017797
With all due respect, rather weird, imo.
What would Sam Harris do? What DOES Sam Harris do?
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 16, 2017 - 05:50pm PT
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What would Sam Harris do? What DOES Sam Harris do?
He's NOT Sam Harris, he's Largo.
Now go cry into your cereal box because you didn't get any pize .....
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 16, 2017 - 05:53pm PT
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that's all you ever got, lol
ever
he really doesn't need you to be his lapdog.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 16, 2017 - 06:01pm PT
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Sam Harris speaks equally to the sciences, to evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, our evolutionary history, introspection, etc.. as means to better "groking" the mental life and its concerns.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 16, 2017 - 06:05pm PT
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You're his lapdaog not me as you're crying here like a little girl at him all the time.
Largo doesn't agree with any of my stuff to begin with.
Not my problem either.
Jeeze .... go post five posts in row of Sam Harris YouTubes again like you always do.
You're soo insecure.
You can't give your side for the life of you.
It's always a copy paste or YouTube.
At least Largo spends the time to write out a long post of his own words, Ed H does too.
What do you do Fruit? You cry into your cereal all the time here at him.
Get a grip dude ....
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Oct 16, 2017 - 06:19pm PT
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Largo
Most of the people I know who are serious meditators have no interest in religion, which involves worship, beliefs, faith, and all the rest. None needed here.
Is this the depth of understanding achieved by 1st person experience? Why is it that less than 1 in 10 people getting meditation training do continue the practice? With Science at my side we do wonder why with the reputed benefits of meditation, which Largo could care less about, why isn't meditation used much or successful only on a few soles?
Largo: Because they are not serious meditators. What a line of wash. It is circular and explains nothing. But okay serious meditator Largo, is the greatly desired state, enlightenment, with serious meditators, much of the same pursuit as everlasting life or the never to be born again wish -- fruit in the sky? Is an enlightened sole in Hell worth a nickel more for the pursuit of false prophets?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 16, 2017 - 07:34pm PT
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For the one or two here willing and able to think in evolutionary psychological terms, here's Harris and Harari on the prospects of engineering new states of consciousness...
There is an entire ocean of consciousness out there... -Harari
https://youtu.be/5jgALWLc-JU?t=1h7m23s
...
Re Harris and his podcast, they are an effective conduit into the latest ideas and insights concerning mind-brain physiology and relations.
The subject of this thread? What is Mind?
Anyone who genuinely cares for the subject matter, has invested time accordingly, and has actually listened to the Harris podcast and its guests knows this.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 16, 2017 - 08:35pm PT
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With Science at my side we do wonder why with the reputed benefits of meditation, which Largo could care less about, why isn't meditation used much or successful only on a few soles?
Largo: Because they are not serious meditators. What a line of wash. It is circular and explains nothing. But okay serious meditator Largo, is the greatly desired state, enlightenment, with serious meditators, much of the same pursuit as everlasting life or the never to be born again wish -- fruit in the sky? Is an enlightened sole in Hell worth a nickel more for the pursuit of false prophets?
Do you realize how utterly silly this is. Sole?
What is it, specifically, that you want "explained" from a meditator's perspective? I might be able to take a crack at that, but you're strictly on your own with all this palaver about prophets, fruit in the sky, and living forever.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Oct 16, 2017 - 09:04pm PT
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Largo said "My entire cause for ever mentioning meditation is that the secular practice of same is so full of misconceptions - virtually always drawn from the outside - that clarification is required just to clean away all the bullshit beliefs. "
This generally is why I post too. Plus a basic question in Zen is What is mind?. Zen approaches this question from a non-discursive POV or when you deduct or unattach from the discursive what is your experience. NOT when you theorize about what it is like to be in a non-discursive POV (map vs territory).
There is MIND from a physics POV and then there is MIND from a personal experience POV; not being an academic I am drawn to the personal POV. When you get a glimpse of the non-discursive mind for the first time it is quite q shock because a new POV interrupts / severed the existing POV and it is a new perspective( a wow moment). I can get stuck in ruts and it is helpful to get a shove out of the rut.
Where is Mike L?
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 16, 2017 - 09:39pm PT
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JL: So far as I'm concerned, encouraging people to meditate is like encouraging people to climb uprotected flares and off widths
Once again you imbue meditation with the heroic qualities of extreme sport adventures. Is this a conscious effort to elevate meditative practices to a level beyond their empty silences and serene settings? Apart from glimpsing your clean metal slate and soothing inner tantrums, what on earth is the practice good for?
Are you in some way benefiting mankind or are you simply naval-gazing? How does experiencing empty awareness have any effect on the real world? How can it tell us anything of value about the human mind, an organ evolved by nature to solve problems and explore the mysteries of the universe. There is a reason why it is so difficult to quiet the discursive mind: it's what we are designed by evolution to use.
Every meditator needs a Samurai standing guard.
Most of what Jan and PSP say point to actual benefits of meditating, benefits understandable by the uninitiated. Do you really think that reaching the meditative states you have experienced is in any way equivalent to training diligently as an artist for years or obtaining a graduate degree in the sciences, just because you have 'put in the time'?
Is metaphysical philosophy your only avenue of investigation?
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