1) How did you get started? 2) How it changed you? What are the benefits? 3) How hard it is to meditate?
I am currently reading Wake Up from Sam Harris and I am very interested in trying it out. This quote from the book really speaks to me:
"Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others. This might not be obvious, especially when there are aspects of your life that seem in need of improvement—when your goals are unrealized, or you are struggling to find a career, or you have relationships that need repairing. But it’s the truth. Every experience you have ever had has been shaped by your mind. Every relationship is as good or as bad as it is because of the minds involved. If you are perpetually angry, depressed, confused, and unloving, or your attention is elsewhere, it won’t matter how successful you become or who is in your life—you won’t enjoy any of it.”
Meditation outside a proper metaphysical framework is just mental masturbation. Yes it might calm you down a bit, and give you temporary physiological benefits but its real spiritual therapy is negated. You might as well do Wim Hoff's breathing exercises if you just want bodily/neurological benefits.
You should still try it out, even if you're reading a fedora book about it.
Ryan Miller
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Adrian Bailey
>white people aping Buddhism >lol we're spiritual but not religious >literally larping
Daniel Bell
The tradition of meditation predates Buddhism by millennia, chowderhead.
Austin Martinez
Meditation can be approached from many angles because it is such a simple tool. For me it is a tool to learn myself and to become more present. You see I have a strong habit of comparing and categorizing thing because I like to understand what I'm doing. Even though that is the only way of intellectually obtaining skill it also is a way of simplifying to get the most crucial information and literally filtering the rest out of your mind. Because I do this and that I am a musician, music has become very emotionally unengaging. To me it turns into numbers and Greek names and though I can hop into almost every musical situation , it has somewhat lost its point.
Meditation is a way for me to hear the sounds as they really are; without my mind in the way. I learned that there are two parts of your mind. They are not exhaustive but as for the mechanism they make up they are. These two parts are the part of sensations and concepts this one holds the actual mental substance but it can be filled in by present experience, and the other has no material at all it is the pure part that sees what the other part is temporarily made of. Many hippies and people try to "find themselves" but that can't be cause it's like looking at your own eyes. Like I said this part has nothing to look at.
All this is said to make the point that you can't think about something and really see it at the same time. If you look at the sunset and you start to compare all the colors to names you know, or if you begin wondering about any random subject at all , you have lost sight of the sunset. It's like you aren't even in the same place. Its like me with music, if I'm thinking about what the chord is and what intervals are in a bass line then that is my experience. The music is lost.
Brandon Murphy
That smile though
Only 1984, strangely, of all other books has come as close to describing that smile and they seemed so dissimilar
Henry Clark
I'm assuming he just talks about how good meditation is for you clearing your head and so on. But doesn't actually teach you anything about morality. Spirituality on its own is pretty worthless.
Henry Campbell
Theres a point when you are so deep into the meditation hole, you realize that any type of thought or thinking can be a meditation.
Meditation serves as a distraction to focus on breathing /biofeedback Or it serves to increase your awaress of otherwise mundane things.
Landon Allen
that's true but harris is specifically aping buddhism in his meditation >In the same book, he describes his experience with Dzogchen, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice, and recommends it to his readers.
Jacob Sanchez
The new evil in secular religion is adverse abnormal psychology. People can be freaks so far as it doesnt significantly harm anyone.
Bentley Johnson
Harris is just hopping on the "mindfullness" fad thats popping up in the periodicals lately.
Dylan Cook
Yes it's legit. Mostly anyone who's really delved deep into it can tell you it's had positive effects and whatnot. Mindfulness does have you experiencing life differently on a moment-to-moment basis, no doubt about it. Things just feel cleaner in a way when you're present. Also the brains of people who meditate are physiologically different, there's increased gray-matter in the hippocampus and so on. There's plenty of scientific literature on this.
They use a technique that works, he uses that technique without buying into their religious non-sense. Where's the problem? If lifting weights or running was a religious tradition and he started doing that for the benefits of it, would he be buying into their religion? Would he be religious? Obviously not.
>Hopping on You mean having spent probably 2 years of his life in silent meditation retreats and having done it long before it was a big thing? Weird knee-jerk reaction of trying to discredit him without a proper basis. If he knows anything well, it's probably meditation.
James Sullivan
Go to bed Sam. Shill your book elsewhere.
Brayden Robinson
>Anyone here meditates? Absolutely fuck not, I find it completely infuriating. After counting 2-3 breaths I immediately want to go kill something. There's nothing else I can't think of anything that makes me immediately angry like the thought of trying to do meditation. It utterly enrages me and I kinda hate anyone that does it or recommends it.
Jaxon Perez
wow dude you sound really angry. you should try doing some meditation it'll make you feel calmer
Isaiah Reyes
>three authors
No thanks.
Gavin Ortiz
I assume your conception of gender roles is pretty static and meditating is something "enlightened" females do or males use to virtue signal for pussy.
Do you get angry becuase you cant make meditation manly? Do you consider youself a wuss for even engaging in it thus starting your decline into feminine weakness? Or does the stillness in your mind cause you to look inward with disgust then transferring your self hate towards blaming the act of meditation itself instead of trying to come to grips that you are a "disgusting" person?
Or maybe you are a man of action and perfer movement? Many adhd people need something to fiddle with to occupy their ameobic attention. In which case any act of repition is a meditation.
Alexander Morales
Good post.
I want to disagree with you but I feel that it all depends on how rigorously we choose to define meditation and, more importantly, spirituality. In my own experience, meditative practice does not need a recognized spiritual framework to be effective, however it does benefit from some sort of spiritual identity or acceptance. By this I mean someone who is a 'devoted' atheist or some similarly anti-spiritual person will get little to nothing out of meditation. However, I also believe that there are very few such people, and that such people are beyond hope.
For someone who has any interest in meditation, there will be benefits. At the very least from slowing everything down regularly. I think the primary benefits of meditative practice are a greater control over your own mind, body, spirit. And I do not mean meditative practice to be sitting cross-legged on the floor humming to yourself.
In college my coach brought someone in to talk to my crew team about meditation and how we might apply it to training and racing. Often, in these 'how to start meditating guides' we are told to do something like let thoughts enter and exit our mind without paying attention to them. We began to essentially implement this while in the boat and there were noticeable improvements. Personally, since then, I have found exercise to be my form of meditation. Now I run, and when I do there are no thoughts, probably no self either although I don't really investigate that.
Point being you do not need to be a buddhist or whatever to meditate, and you do not need be able to sit in the lotus position. Reflection is not exclusive to the Catholics' confessional.
Asher Wilson
He's nothing more than those vapid thots on Facebook posting pictures of their asses bending over in yoga pants with captions about how mindful they are.
And meditation has been popular among pseuds, poseurs, and flakes since the 1960s.
To be fair. Im all down for meditation. I just hate sam harris. Wouldnt care so much if he used a pen name or something.
Colton Edwards
Why do you hate him?
James Ross
From everything i have read of his, the guy sounds like a big fucking yuppie. Hes in the business of writing books from a factory of ideology he built. Hes not searching for truth, he is selling it. He is as superficial as his understanding of MRI's and scientific research.
Grayson Roberts
Why is this guy always using extremely cringy and pretentious titles like “Project Reason” and “Waking Up”?
John Cox
What is a proper metaphysical framework, in your view?
Xavier Cook
Because his thinking is 3rd grade level.
Luke Smith
Buddhism, Hinduism, Platonism
Julian Gomez
It's kind of like physical exercise in the sense that it can take the form of varying levels of practice and that in turn manifests in certain results. Somebody who jogs 5k on the weekends is going to have a different experience than somebody who trains for marathons; you average DYEL is going to have a different experience in the gym than some guy on roids who's in there for 4 hours a day and watches his macros.
Meditation can be almost negligibly positive to life-transforming so I found it difficult to speak about it in the general sense.
Jordan Fisher
All religion is larping.
Luis Wood
Recommended Buddhist Veeky Forums?
Easton Nelson
Doctrine of Awakening
Joshua Harris
If im going to larp. Ill larp as a viking warrior not a poof that sits on a rock jerking off to new atheist ideals. Men need action and creativity vibes comes from doing shit not being a girl and needing to chill on a rock for 2 hours a day. You want to clear your head, deadlift squat and bench press. Being a soy boy is what meditation is about.
Jack Adams
>If I'm going to larp I'm going to larp like pathetic pirate niggers
Daniel Martinez
Well you're projecting heavily, what you say doesn't agree with my experiences. You mean submit to the results of other people's thinking? I would argue that adhering to an ideology is mental masturbation, touting dogma and confusing faith and fact with a perverse sense of self rightousness. Of course one could argue that eventually even if one were to carve a new path it ultimately leads to the same "non/answers" due to inherent "limitations" of the structure called homo sapiens sapiens. Either way its in our nature to seek new ways constantly test for novelty, and we do get there. Even though most thoughts and problems current people run into are that of old, it's no reason to hate on it. It is what it is. All these paths stem and adhere to our own chemistry catalysed by psychedelics throughout history.
Btw all reasons are under the umbrella you seem to look down on as bodily/neurological benefits. There is nothing, but the body. Don't presume you know Jack of other people's experiences, you don't. You can't step into the same river twice, meditation it's effects varies session after session just like everything else experienced in life. Dogmatic or experimental.
Parker Cooper
i actually cant fathom how somebody can think pretending to be le stongman viking guy is less lame than being a hippy. it's the fucking gayest thing on earth.
Kevin Bennett
Is this a good intro to Buddhism or do I need to read something else first?
Wyatt Reyes
lol because I am a strong guy you beta cuck. all men should lift, read and do a martial art. being a balding soy boy is because you chose a weak archetype.
David Brown
Half the book is an introduction to Buddhism, its concepts and context, the other half is practice
Levi Hall
Julius Evola isn't a good introduction to anything. He filters everything through his own beliefs giving an inaccurate overview of things like Buddhism and Tantra. Read it if you want to know about Evola's weird strand of Buddhism, not if you want an actual introduction to Buddhism.
Thomas Barnes
Nah cunt; fuck off. I'll continue meditating and reap the benefits, as well as take what I deem true and useful from Buddhism and the like, regardless of your: elitism, snow flakeism, """""""spirituality""""""", ideology, etc.
Tyler Ramirez
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Alexander Walker
aww user did some pleb with a psych BA tell you that you have symptoms of a personality disorder? Or are you just a "traditionalist" who doesnt understand that one of the few useful things coming out of counseling psych today is their over-observation and psycho-education of the masses.
Nathaniel Jenkins
>as well as take what I deem true and useful from Buddhism and the like
>cherry picking techniques, philosophies, and metaphysical ideas from multiple religions and philosophies.
That's a sect of satanism called called New Ageism.
Ian Rodriguez
>"A guide to spirituality without religion" >by "(((Sam Harris)))" >I call myself spiritual but not religious; *tip* INTO THE TRASH
