Ask us about Buddhism: This thread is Avici

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mike12345: Jul 14, 2008; "Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries."

I started meditating again after a five year absence, mainly due to sleep issues. Like, I wake up too early. So I figured I might as well just meditate. During one of my meditations in the early morning hours I experienced such a trip that I'm almost afraid to go deeper into meditation again. I mean I'm still doing it, but in the back of my head I got a little bit of fear of entering a deep trip-like state again. Does anyone else have similar experiences, what do you do in that case?

# ¿ Jan 7, 2020 13:39

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 07:15

mike12345: Jul 14, 2008; "Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries."

Senju Kannon posted:

shinjin

that is all (that i know because i'm more into ethics than systematic buddhology)

I don't know if you're telling me to look into mantras, but that's not such a bad idea. Also I never considered mantras so that's a new cool venue for research.

Achmed Jones posted:

Ive experienced what you're talking about but it never occurred to me to fear it. Why do you fear it?

I have a suspicion that a lot of the more, uh, startling stuff is hovering between being asleep and being awake. I've had pretty intense sits during the day, but I only remember the real wild poo poo being early morning/late night for whatever reason.

I've had it before but yeah maybe it's tied to the fact sometimes I fall asleep during meditation. I fear the intensity/power. It's more like "I'm not prepared for this, and had no intention to be".

Caufman posted:

Oof, nothing so exciting as that. Lately, I've just been noticing that I have worsening tinnitus. How long do you meditate in a session?

20 - 30 minutes, but sometimes I fall asleep so it really varies. And then I wake up and start meditating again.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2020 11:16

mike12345: Jul 14, 2008; "Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries."

I've started listening to a Ram Dass audiobook, learned about him through his obituary. Anyone else familiar with his talks? I like it, it's simple but not stupid, good starting point for anyone curious about eastern philosophy.

KiteAuraan posted:

I would also try Sōto zazen with eyes open and facing a wall. Harder to slip off in 20-30 minute sessions and less intense in my experience.

Yeah that's how I started, but I'm currently interested in straying from the rigid path and meditating in different positions/circumstances.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2020 16:48

mike12345: Jul 14, 2008; "Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries."

glickeroo posted:

At a certain meditativeness we've also found such overwhelming bliss to also coincide with an arising of fear - because the feeling is one of being swept away, of letting the bliss completely destroy/overwrite/drown/clear/cleanse all our sense of self. However, again, surrendering/relaxing/letting-go/allowing into the meditation has never destroyed the sense of SELF, just the false imaginings that we falsely identified with.

Yeah that's a good description of the fear/experience.

Mushika posted:

How do y'all feel about secular Buddhism? In the Stephen Batchelor vein. Is it white appropriation? Is it an interesting perspective on western Buddhism? I'm curious especially how goons who may have been raised Buddhist feel about that.

Someone published a book (McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality) about this, there's an interview with the author online. Here's an excerpt:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/m...lness-1.5369991

interview with author of the book posted:

This reminds me of a phrase I hadn't encountered before reading about mindfulness. What's an integrity bubble?

An integrity bubble is where there is a small oasis within a corporation - for example let's take Google because that's a great example of it.

You have a small group of engineers who are getting individual level benefits from corporate mindfulness training. They're learning how to de-stress. Google engineers [are] working 60-70 hours a week - very stressful. So they're getting individual level benefits while not questioning the digital distraction technologies [that] Google engineers are actually trying to work on. Those issues are not taken into account in a kind of mindful way.

So you become mindful, to become more productive, to produce technologies of mass distraction, which is quite an irony in many ways. A sad irony actually.

How the U.S. military uses mindfulness to 'optimize warrior performance'

If mindfulness is being used to support techniques of mass distraction ... I know you also have a concern about techniques of mass destruction. How much do you know - how much does anyone know - about how mindfulness is used by the military?

That's probably one of the most egregious examples that show what happens when you strip mindfulness from any sort of ethical or moral context. You reduce it basically to a utilitarian attention enhancement technique. And that's exactly what's happened. Even though they do call it 'mindfulness' in the military, it's been going on probably for at least 10 years now. There's a program called the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program which received over 125 million dollars from the Department of Defence. And I know about 10 million dollars have been devoted to mindfulness training and mindfulness research in the military. There are a number of neuroscientists that are working on mindfulness training programs and research for the U.S. Army [and] the U.S. Marines.

Probably one of the most interesting examples is down in San Diego. I believe it was the U.S. Marines. They created a mock Afghan village. In other words, they had bombs going off and everything. And they trained these U.S. Marines in a mindfulness program. And so they ran them through this mock Afghan village and they said 'Look, now you can learn how to calm down. Now you can learn how to deal with stress better because we've given you this training.'

But the bottom line is that the whole purpose of this training is to make better soldiers. 'Comprehensive fitness training' is what they call it. Creating mental armour for these soldiers. But the bottom line is it's really trying to 'optimize warrior performance' and that's the actual language they use if you read some of the Department of Defence documents. And that translates to better sharpshooters, better killers.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2020 14:22

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