I meditate now and then. My wife all the time, though not with the expectations she use to have when practicing Zen. It quites the mind and allows it (one) too perceive and learn something new. Everyone is different. Probably oversold for marketing purposes, but certainly an interesting health and philosophical practice. Observation of oneself can lead to interesting new insights.

There is the magic, mystic crystal revelations of the New Age, and then there is just ordinary secular meditation. The neophyte in secular meditation is asked to sit, breathe, relax, and only observe what passes through the mind, as a passive observer. The practice is to let it flow, not interfering. Just observe. There should be no judgement or denial: only passive acceptance.

With practice, one can achieve a quiet meditative-type state: relaxed, calm, passive. The chatter of the brain gradually dies down; it doesn't usually go away.

One can add a mantra; a Christian meditator would probably adopt a prayer, or a liturgical passage, and simply repeat it literally, or think it. And so on.

I have not meditated beyond the quiet, relaxed, calm, passive observer state. But so far, I have experienced acceptance rather than denial. It isn't a primitive state, it's just a state that anyone can achieve with some practice, for whatever purpose they have in mind.

Achieving a mystical state, as in deep and prolonged meditation, is the practice of specialists.

There should be no judgement or denial: only passive acceptance. — Bitter Crank

Yes, but it depends on the definition of denial. When I am very anxious about a particular problem and I meditate, then I am fully accepting of the anxiety I experience, but I try to detach from the effort to mentally solve the problem. That is a sort of temporary "denial" of solving the problem, since I realise that I cannot solve it in that state.

I have a hunch that those who are dismissive of meditation are probably responding to what they see as a negative attitude towards thinking. Often meditation can focus on feeling and bodily experience and classify thinking as unhelpful. Inevitably this sometimes results in "my way is better than your way" with people dissing each others methods.

There is the magic, mystic crystal revelations of the New Age, and then there is just ordinary secular meditation. — Bitter Crank

This is exactly it and I think nowadays people assume that meditation is linked to new ageism. The one thing I hate about yoga classes is the leader tends to blab on about something mystical, whereas I enjoy spending an hour in class essentially just stretching my body, a way to decompress and escape my incredibly busy lifestyle.

That is the way I see meditation, self-reflective practice that takes one out of the busy and places emphasis even temporarily just on 'me'. For mental health and to improve there are a number of other 'practices' that need to be done, including what you eat, friends that you have, exercise and taking care of your brain through reading and knowledge. All this leads to peace, which is happiness.

To me, meditation is really just self-reflective practice that slows the mind down to remind the person of the importance of this peace.

I have a hunch that those who are dismissive of meditation are probably responding to what they see as a negative attitude towards thinking. Often meditation can focus on feeling and bodily experience and classify thinking as unhelpful. Inevitably this sometimes results in "my way is better than your way" with people dissing each others methods. — Perplexed

Yeah, when I first learned meditation, I was told I was too much in my head Ö

incredibly busy lifestyle. — TimeLine

:-} - and you're not even in the business world...

(Y)

Is business the only conceivable form of busy-ness? :s

Is business the only conceivable form of busy-ness? :s — Janus

Yes >:O

Does that answer satisfy you dear? :P

What has that to do with anything? Right now, I am on a tram on my way to work. I am on my phone to avoid having to look at people pressed into eachother. I will work all day managing 10 staff who are dependent on me. I have come to a point where I am considering leaving TPF because of this and a number of other personal and creative pursuits I have planned including a documentary I am partaking in a few months and an adoption application where I will need to leave my current housing arrangements and rent a place suitable for us.

I once owned my own business too and can understand the difficulties. But my life right now is much more busy then it was back then.

Thanks, I really needed a picture of your feet as proof that you are on a tram...

Gosh, some people... >:O

No. ;)

No. ;) — Janus

Why are you so hard to satisfy then?!

Because I demand quality.

Because I demand quality. — Janus

Quality in what?

Everything.

Everything. — Janus

I was taught by Diogenes to lower my expectation and I'll never be frustrated again! You should try it! ;)

You know what they say about assumptions? Did I say I that I expected anything or that I was frustrated?

With regard to anxiety I think that it can produce a cascade of thoughts which often are unhelpful because they merely perpetuate the anxiety. In this case an emphasis on the body can help to ground you and make you aware that you are more than those thoughts and put them into a perspective that stops you getting carried away. When you are calm maybe the problem can be reframed in new ways. Ultimately though I don't think meditation is about problem solving but radical acceptance. At bottom there is nothing to fix but only a getting to know more intimately. Here again is the rub of denial if this is used to turn away from problems.

You know what they say about assumptions? Did I say I that I expected anything or that I was frustrated? — Janus

You said that you DEMAND quality. You said that you are not satisfied when I asked you. Seems quite evident now, no need to backtrack Sir ;)

Why is it that meditation is the holy grail of mysticism? Is it not because meditation is a form of denial? It is a return to a more primitive way of thinking that is known as intuition. — Magnus Anderson

This phrase is obviously pejorative, i.e. return to an atavistic or ‘primitive’ attitude. However, intuition is essential to anyone - even scientists rely on it!

Leaving that aside - the English word ‘mediitation’ is not quite the same as the Buddhist or Hindu term, dhyana. The English ‘meditation’ means to think deeply about something or dwell on an idea. Buddhist meditation is not focussed on thought, in fact the pursuit of thoughts is discouraged. The practice is to be aware of thoughts as they arise, but when they’re noticed, to return the attention to the breath and/or bodily sensations. In Sōtō Zen the practice is called Za-Zen, or Shikan-taza which literally means ‘just sitting’. However it is practiced in the context of the elaborate philosophical writings of the founder of the school, Master Dogen, who was a very sophisticated thinker - comparable to his approximate Western contemporary, Meister Eckhardt.

This point of dhyana practice is to see through the often automatic mental reactions that the mind forms. That ‘seeing through’ is what is referred to as ‘insight’. In Buddhist meditation, the aim is not seeking unity with the deity, but it does result in a sense of relatedness with everything, as the unconscious mechanisms of habitual thought-patterns disperse.

There is the magic, mystic crystal revelations of the New Age — Bitter Crank

There’s a chapter in Evelyn Underhill’s “Mystcism” about the distinction between the two words, magic and mysticism, both of which are outdated and have different connotations than they did when she wrote, but it’s worth noting. (Off the top of my head), From her research, she deleineates magic as a psychologizing form of mystic practice with the sole purpose of power; harnessing a practice for personal gain. Mysticism in the classical sense as practiced within Christianity is a pure act of love for the creator; the “Divine Wound”, and is focused on achieving Union with the divine.

So, it’s intersting to note that theosophy, and then New Ageism (growing out of theosophy) grew out of a more magical approach to mysticism. Which would put secular meditation, yoga, etc, purely in the camp of magic, not mysticism. Spiritual practice for personal power and gain, not for a movement towards union with the divine.

I’ll look at the chapter tonight.

“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.”

― Dōgen

Demanding does not necessarily include expecting, and not being satisfied does not necessarily include frustration. :)

Here's a brain dump on the topic. This is the fruit of about 50 years noodling around on the subject from all angles with all sorts of "systems", teachers and traditions, so take it FWIW.

Meditation is often presented in a vastly over-complicated way, sometimes overblown, sometimes under-estimated. It's quite simple in principle (though it's got tremendous depth, and does require commitment, in practice). There are two aspects to it, or two sides to the coin of it (I'm using the formulation of Mahayana Buddhism, but it's really the same in all systems, because it's grounded in commonalities re. how the brain/mind works):-

1. "Calming" meditation - quite simply, this is just getting the body into parasympathetic activation mode, while the mind remains alert and awake. The nervous system has two modes of activation, sympathetic and parasympathetic, sympathetic is the normal waking state, in which the mind and body are geared to interacting with the world around you. Parasympathetic activation is the body "shutting down" in order to self-repair - most obviously in sleep, but sometimes just dozing off can get it too. The key is that in meditation you have activate the parasympathetic nervous system but also at the same time keep the mind awake and alert - and that's tricky, because normally when the body "drops" into parasympathetic activation (it's a notable sensation that you can sometimes catch in the act while falling asleep), the mind shuts down too (i.e. one falls asleep). The required alertness is obtained by sitting upright and keeping the spine absolutely straight, but while the body is relaxed, and that is effected by getting the right tilt to the pelvis, which is effected by using a cushion and sitting cross legged (in one of several possible ways) with the knees lower than the hips. There are lots of other options, but this is what one might call the "classic" method that's common across many traditions.

In the calm state, you are alert and awake, aware of what's going on around you, but not reacting to it, and the mind is naturally fairly empty of thoughts, while the body is deeply relaxed, with the breath naturally slow, refined, minimal and even. Also, the body is somewhat "blank" in terms of sensations - one might say it's the proprioceptive equivalent of "brain grey" for the visual system when the eyes stop saccading, or have the same input wherever they saccade (e.g. if you either fixate on an object, or stare at a blank wall). The more practiced you are at calming meditation, the more naturally empty of thoughts the mind will get, and quicker too (i.e. at first it might take 5-10 minutes to get the "drop", eventually it's instant, and profoundly deep, as soon as you sit down to your accustomed posture).

There are many, many ways to mechanically get the body into a parasympathetic state (e.g. body scanning, focusing on the breath, counting breaths, fixating on an object, staring at a blank wall, etc.) and there are all sorts of refinements, but that's the basic idea.

2. "Insight" meditation. This is what you "do" while you're in the calm state, and there are roughly two types of things to do in the calm state: 1) rational investigation, and 2) passive observation of subjective experience.

Rational investigation is, for example, analyzing the philosophical teachings of a traditional school like Buddhism or Daoism, or even something like the method of Cartesian doubt, but in the sense of how they apply to you and your personal experience, rather than as mere arguments (as we would do with philosophy here). Essentially one "tests" the teachings in one's own experience, with one's mind as a laboratory of sorts. Particular attention may be paid to the question "Who/what am I?" and this is one of the most powerful methods, as it attacks the central problem directly. But meditations on transience, death, etc., are also valuable.

Passive observation is to simply be aware of the world without thinking of what it is, what it's called, without conceptualizing it. You suspend your knowledge of what this "thing", your experience, is, but you nevertheless attend to it carefully in the here and now. One charming simile used in the Tibetan teachings is of a child wandering a temple. The kid doesn't know what the hell these golden statues of gods, etc., are, but it's hypnotized by their beauty. That's the thing you want, that suspension of naming and conceptualization, that not-knowing, while still being minutely focused on the texture of experience in the here and now.

By either route, or alternating both, and with sufficient depth of calm, at some point - usually, though not invariably, after a period of intense fear, or of feeling like you're close to losing your mind - it occurs to you that you don't exist in the way you've been accustomed all your life to thinking you exist. It occurs to you that you are not an independent entity imprisoned in the body, sitting somewhere behind the eyes peeping out at the world. The ordinary everyday sense of "I", "me", etc., vanishes, or one might say it becomes diaphanous, or insignificant. At the same time, there's a concomitant realization that "your" consciousness isn't personal, but rather impersonal, i.e. it "belongs" to the Universe, it's not just the body's consciousness, but also the property of the Universe at large.

Initially, this experience can be either bland or an absolutely stunning revelation, it's different for different people and at different times. How it's described in different cultures and in different times varies as well - some cultures have been plain and analytical about it, some have been more florid and "religious" in describing it. The emotional feeling-tone of the insight in its full form is one of immense, profound peace, "the peace that passeth understanding." (Note: this is different from the sense of calm that arises with parasympathetic activation, it's a mental phenomenon, the result of having come up to the buffers, so to speak, to a full stop, with no more questions, with all possible questions of the "big" variety answered.)

It's the same realization whether the context is religious or a-religious, theistic or non-theistic, or rationalist. (The religionist simply views the experience as revelatory of a direct link to the Divine - the bit of God, who is omnipresent, that's in you, so to speak; the rationalist can take a more abstract view that it's simply a kind of intimacy with the Universe at large, or even more simply, an absence of the sense of separation.)

Notably, insight can be had without the benefit of calming meditation, in ordinary everyday circumstances, or in peak/flow experiences (such as skilled sports, or drug experiences) or in moments of stress, grief, fear, etc. - but it's usually fleeting, evanescent, and often passed over as of no significance, or rejected as something fearful (some forms of what's been called "depersonalization" are probably insight experiences). Calming meditation stabilizes the insight so that it's more fully grasped. Also, insight deepens calm, and calm facilitates insight - they go together rather nicely and help each other along.

Having this experience is only the beginning - obviously the ultimate aim is to live in the world from this perspective. And that's where the "teachings" of all the great religions come from. Were we simply rational animals, ethics would remain at the level of virtue ethics. The larger dimension of ethics, the sense of universal brotherhood, etc., comes from this area, comes from people who have experienced this type of experience. (Of course these are not contradictory - universalist ethics must be built on a solid foundation of virtue ethics, otherwise it becomes an insane kind of hyper-altruism. In fact the practice of virtue ethics is a necessary preliminary practice for meditation in most traditional systems, since if the mind is constantly disturbed by reflection on wrongdoing, it's difficult for it to get into a calm state.)

One thing to watch out for, a major pitfall, is this: the disappearance of the ordinary sense of self is not itself the goal, and it's a common trap to think it is, to make an enemy of the ordinary everyday sense of self, and to strive to be in a "state" of no-self all the time. That's a false goal, pseudo-enlightenment. In fact, it's perfectly fine to have that ordinary, everyday sense of self. The trick is to know at all times, with unshakeable certainty, that it's not real, even while it seems to be. That is full, final enlightenment, at least according to some Buddhist and Advaita traditions. Having the experienc eof the disappearance of the ordinary sense of self is a big help, a big initiation, and with that experience one finally has one's foot in the door, so to speak; but the disappearance per se of the ordinary sense of self is not the goal. Again, traditional teaching similes come to our aid: in the dark, one mistakes a coiled rope for a snake. Upon investigation, one realizes it's a coiled rope, and one then remains unshakably certain that it's not a snake, but a coiled rope, even if it still looks like a snake.

This is basically what it's all about. As I say, it can be elaborated in various ways and there are lots of possible ramifications that can be explored, and it's something you can get better at in various ways, but this twofold procedure is the core "thing" of meditation, and the "royal road" that's common to many traditions in the East

(Note: the West had similar teachings in antiquity - for example, there's a practice called "incubation" which was used as a form of healing and psychotherapy in the ancient Greek world, which involved lying down in a dark place and simply giving up - under supervision and with the guidance of trained attendants. Parmenides' teacher was said to have taught him "silence." The West's teachings had to go underground as a part of "occultism" during the time of Catholicism's doctrinal and political hegemony, and often got garbled as a result. It should be noted that, like some Chinese Daoist systems, and Tibetan systems like Dzogchen, the Western systems tended to favour "astral travel", which is basically lucid dreaming entered into from the waking state. This "astral travel" is what "magick" is all about - it's what generated the various "apocalypses" and "visions" you find in things like the Gnostic teachings, as well as things like the "visionary" proem to Parmenides' philosophy, which reads, quite literally like a straightforward account of a vision, and is itself an introduction to the philosophy, rather than just some flowery, irrelevant preamble.)

Thanks, I really needed a picture of your feet as proof that you are on a tram... — Agustino

Proof that I am busy, unlike you who talks non-stop about business and appears non-stop to be on TPF. Gosh, some people. (L)

With regard to anxiety I think that it can produce a cascade of thoughts which often are unhelpful because they merely perpetuate the anxiety. In this case an emphasis on the body can help to ground you and make you aware that you are more than those thoughts and put them into a perspective that stops you getting carried away. When you are calm maybe the problem can be reframed in new ways. Ultimately though I don't think meditation is about problem solving but radical acceptance. At bottom there is nothing to fix but only a getting to know more intimately. Here again is the rub of denial if this is used to turn away from problems. — Perplexed

I agree, hence why I myself have stated that for me, above all else, peace is really my only goal and by peace I mean that calm, level-headed attitude and a restfulness within but this is not achieved by mindfulness or meditation only. It requires a complete transformation in your attitude and how well you take care of yourself.

Many of us are in a position where we are required to manage conflicting or multiple things and the more tired and anxious you are, the less productive and so you end up lacking any achievement. Life becomes this terrible repetition of just dealing with shit with bits and pieces of positive "moments" that keep you going.

The most important problem to overcome in my opinion is the people in your personal space because you can form attachments or dependency - either emotionally or economically - that make you adapt to their presence, like having a thorn in your side that you do not remove, and so you just deal with them day in day out until you find that years have passed and you haven't an inkling as to what happiness is. So it is to find the courage - despite you wanting them around - to admit that these people are toxic to your happiness and that may mean a radical change to your personal circumstances.

I find busyness comforting. Sitting still drives me crazy.

I have come to a point where I am considering leaving TPF because of this and a number of other personal and creative pursuits I have planned — TimeLine