Ask us about Buddhism: This thread is Avici

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zhar: May 3, 2019

Keret posted:

Have any of you had success with letting go of ruminative thought, and could offer some guidance?

This is what basic concentration practice (eg mindfulness of breathing) is for. When you notice your mind is distracted or has wandered, disregard the thought and redirect attention more appropriately could apply on the cushion or off.

The "hard" part is the ability to notice, which is trained in meditation and will rub off in the rest of life. It sounds like this is already happening so just keep going!

# ¿ May 8, 2019 19:33

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:20

zhar: May 3, 2019

NikkolasKing posted:

But do you have to give up all your wealth to be a good person then? Bill Gates giving away billions in charity doesn't matter and he's still a monster?

This Citations Needed podcast episode might be of interest regarding Bill Gates.

Here's a fairly random quote I picked that might be of some relevance:

quote:

Um, I want to talk about the lavish media praise, but first I want to establish something. A lot of this boils down to, and I think, uh, a lot of listeners may listen to this and say, �oh, y�all just being sort of cynical,� and I�m, I�m sure you get that a lot. There�s this idea of good intentions, which is I think politically a very uninteresting question. What matters is material effect, and I think in many ways the good intentions is baked into the ideology of what we�ll sort of broadly call capitalist ideology. Take, for example, Gates, you know, his affinity for charter schools, even if he, if he accepts the premises, which I would argue is a free radical right-wing premise that unions are fundamentally bad for children. So he therefore wants to help bust unions or undermine unions as do the Waltons, then his intentions are sort of irrelevant because the capitalist model, the libertarian model, the model that billionaires know what�s best, is baked into the cake of his worldview. And so the good intention question is sort of less relevant than what is the ideology at play here. That�s where I think that most people who think, �okay, I don�t think that he�s evil.� It sort of doesn�t matter, you know what I mean?

# ¿ May 17, 2019 09:58

zhar: May 3, 2019

re posture: mine is terrible so I generally stay in supine with a pillow behind my head. but I also find it very useful if I'm sitting to do a few minutes of supine (something like shavasana*) with straight back emphasising physical relaxation (could be full body, scanning or whatever floats your boat), then move into sitting keeping the relaxation trying to only tense muscles necessary to sit. ymmv but hopefully at that point if nothing else you will be relaxed enough not to worry about it too much.

more info:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUuKOqmY7NU&t=272s

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 00:04

zhar: May 3, 2019

Mushika posted:

Admittedly, though, Tibetan buddhism does make a lot of supernatural claims that are difficult for me to reconcile with the Buddha's stress on empirical skepticism. It is supremely condescending to simply hand wave them away as psychological metaphors, surely, but it is a doubt that lingers in the back of my mind.

They may be more explicit in Tibetan Buddhism but fwiw supernatural powers are prevalent in both the Pali and Sanskrit canons, so there's no real getting away from it. Not to say you should blindly believe in them though and probably not worth worrying about unless they pertain to your practice.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2019 17:08

zhar: May 3, 2019

I don't think many Buddhists have a problem with appropriation, after all if you use the techniques and follow the ethical guidelines you are accumulating the good merit and karma whether you like it or not! That's more important than whether or not you adopt the whole worldview, and by doing so you may get the karma to be more open to the rest later. Noone has a problem with MBSR for example, and I know some Buddhist monks have taught meditation techniques to Christian monks etc.

I think generally what people may have a problem with is when people take some aspects of Buddhism without the worldview and call themselves Buddhists, which is a bit confusing and (at least IMO) you need at least some worldview to take refuge in earnest, which is when you formally become a Buddhist.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2019 21:38

zhar: May 3, 2019

fffffffffffff posted:

I assume you're in this thread and by extension involved in Buddhist stuff in the US or wherever because you're trying to address this part of yourself. And people are giving meditation advice about doing this or that thing in your mind. Here's what I say as someone who tried, and described some of that within this thread, to make something out of Buddhism and by extension create some relation of myself to Buddhism. Here's the thing about meditative practices, they are not self help, they are not a means to an end, they are barely even a way to cope, they are an end unto themselves, they're self contained. They are done to be done. They are self perpetuating practices done because someone somewhere said something would happen if people did them, because something happened when they did them. This "happening" is the trap itself.

But because most people in the West generally have positive experiences, "good feelins", and because spirituality and personal psychology are so often spoken of in nearly the same breath, meditation is at best a neutral experience for most people, and in many cases positive, letting people think they are more mindful, doing better work, being more attentive, and so on. I think it's all tricks and shell games on that front and muscle memory and habit are doing most of the work that "mindfulness" thinks it's doing. Mindfulness does not create better muscle memory, it gets in the way of it. Self awareness of self awareness is like putting a big log in front of yourself and then tripping over it.

It's not as if meditation is some universal area of human experience and it needs to be touched on and rediscovered and so on. They are created, artificial practices, dependent on specific personal and sociocultural predispositions to even exist.

So then where this is goes is, for someone whos meditation practice brings up only pain and suicidal responses and generally rotten stuff, why do any of it? But if it becomes a choice to say "I will not meditate because it brings me pain", that's as foolish as doing it in the first place. It comes down to recognizing the personal and societal context that even brought you to consider meditation to be a meaningful activity. Same with therapy, for that matter. What do you think catharsis is? What do you think self discovery is? What can your therapist tell you about yourself? Do they know themselves better than you know yourself?

Religious meditation practices (there are no secular meditation practices, they all had religious origins) promise "some other thing". I'm here to say there is no other thing. There is only the current thing. But the current thing is like the top block in the Tower of Babbel, it rests on all the things below it. But there is no way to delve deeper, there is no meditative discovery, it's all turned up on its head. The current thing is the past thing with all the hope of the future thing, but you can't get to the past thing, to the "original thing" because it's a confusion in the first place. It's like an MC Escher painting.

I probably lost people there but the point is all of these methods are dependent on some understanding of structure, within time, and within successive evolution of emotional state into something deemed transcendent. But this delving into structure is the practice unto itself, the practice is action, and action is time, and time is the predicament. However the predicament manifests is the SAME predicament.

Everybody is a different person but the predicament is the same. A recognizance of time, therefore of action, and therefore of forward motion based on past memory. However that manifests is immaterial. Meditative techniques are supposed to be part of a cultural framework, and if they aren't they bring confusion, and if someone is in basic pain in the first place, there's no point participating in the culture. Basic pain however it comes up is an attempt to break off from the surrounding culture without exactly knowing how or why. So just stop the "shoulds" and feel that, don't worry about other people. There's no race against time.

woah

# ¿ Oct 26, 2019 21:45

zhar: May 3, 2019

in general I do think that "buddhist meditation" and buddhism in general is much less equipped to deal with mental health issues than western psychology. there is certainly a lot of scientific evidence to back up the claim that meditative techniques derived from buddhism can have beneficial effects on the brain and mind, but as herstory says one would need somewhat advanced training in both psychology and meditation to be able to give responsible advice on that beyond simple stress management. many people (including myself) got into Buddhism for reasons including mental health and i would agree that there is some risk if one views meditation as a panacea but there is no reason to think that's the case here.

just because something has religious origins does not preclude it from being secular. Western science, especially physics, has many roots in religion (understand the physical world to understand the mind of God) but few people today would try to claim that science is religious.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2019 01:41

zhar: May 3, 2019

Having some form of political representation seems like a good idea for even the most reclusive monastics. Noone lives in complete isolation and being powerless and subject to the whims of a government that may decide they don't like you or decide they would like your monastery and all your stuff seems like a good route to having your tradition extinguished

# ¿ Oct 27, 2019 21:11

zhar: May 3, 2019

echinopsis posted:

I get most of my knowledge from Sam Harris, and I want to know why he�s so keen on non-duality, which I think is what he�s getting at with the dzogchen pointing out instructions.

Like I see so much benefit from mindfulness meditation, I�m not sure what kind of benefit is derived from spending time in a non-dual state.

Though I am super keen to experience it. I wonder if I�ve had glimpses but not sure

I don't feel particularly qualified to speak much to this not really having done the practice or studied it, but from what I understand dzogchen pointing instructions generally attempt to point out rigpa, which is non-dual, but maybe is a little more specific. Deferring to wikipedia (citing a book published by Ranjung Yeshe which is legit):

"wikipedia posted:

Unknowing (marigpa) is not knowing the nature of mind. Knowing (rigpa) is the knowing of the original wakefulness that is personal experience.

I don't know all the specific benefits of knowing your own mind but it certainly seems like it might be useful. At the least I bet it feels really good and liberating (free from the extremes of existence and nonexistence). For all I know it may even lead to wizarding powers.

Again I'm not speaking with much confidence here but with regards to the benefits or main goal perhaps in the Buddhist tradition I will first defer to wikipedia again (citing Sogyal Rinpoche this time):

"wikipedia posted:

The practical training of the Dzogchen path is traditionally, and most simply, described in terms of View, Meditation and Action. To see directly the Absolute state, the Ground of our being is the View; the way of stabilising that view, and making it an unbroken experience is Meditation; and integrating the View into our entire reality, and life, is what is meant by Action.

ie after recognition the view is completely integrated into ones life. This is where I'm especially not confident but I think now (at the culmination of this practice) one experiences everything through rigpa ("Knowing") one is free from delusion as this is the true nature of reality, hence is free from ignorance, and as ignorance is the root cause of dukkha is thus free from dukkha and involuntary rebirth. Maybe this requires additional tantric practices or I'm completely wrong here though, I am really not an expert.

e: does anyone know how to get rid of the " when quote linking? I didn't put any in the bbcode but if I try and add one to the end so it at least looks symmetrical it messes up the link

"example" posted:

with closing marks

zhar fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Jan 25, 2020

# ¿ Jan 25, 2020 00:00

zhar: May 3, 2019

Like I'm not trying to refute glickeroo or anything, but if they are authentic dzogchen pointing out instructions, then I think "the non-dual state" is a bit loose a description given that could describe a different thing in a number of different traditions, buddhist or otherwise, but in dzogchen it is definitely not samadhi.

I'm quite interested in how Harris describes it though, he seems very secular and everywhere I've encountered this stuff it's been wrapped in what I imagine the secular types consider religious.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2020 00:20

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:20

zhar: May 3, 2019

I've heard it particularly in regards to the 6 perfections, eg generosity leads to good material resources, ethical conduct leads to a good rebirth, patience / fortitude leads to physical attractiveness, good health and so on. You can be reborn as a human due to fantastic ethical conduct but you may be bringing very little merit (from generosity etc) with you, and when that runs out you will be unable to survive. For example someone who leads an ethical life but is impatient may be reborn as a human who dies young of ill health. I don't think this even has to come about due to unwholesome actions but just running out of positive merit. Motivation is important too, which is why bodhisattvas don't just end up as devas all the time.

This is not prejudice against disabled people, poor people, animals or the ugly though. Karma is akin to something like the laws of thermodynamics: no one made it, the Buddha just observed and explained it. I have little doubt we all have latent negative karmic impressions in our mindstreams, and if I start thinking myself superior to people in a wheelchair or whatever that's just going to reinforce self-cherishing mental distortions leaving me stuck in samsara.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2020 13:11

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