Do you meditate, Veeky Forums?

>What is Jhana

It's a meditation framework taken from Buddhism. Jhanas are states of meditation that are marked by bliss, rapture, happiness, and several other phenomena. It's quite the practice.

>Where did you learn these other techniques?

There are a vast amount of resources on meditation. Traditions that have had meditation at its core have been around for thousands of years, so there's plenty of material to work with. Jhana in particular has made a re-emergence in the West in the last decade or so with a lot of material written on it, both in book form and online.

>Is there some kind of overview of the different "styles
Use the internet. At the very least take a look at the Wikipedia page.

Mindfulness in Plain English is very straightforward if you just want instruction about what to do, not much woo in it or anything

anyway as a side note, if you are going to get really into meditation to get out of it something more that modern life stress relief, buddhist books will tell you that compassion and meditation are linked, but i don't think that's true unless you link it yourself from the beginning

there's plenty of "successful" semi-psychopaths around using meditation to go into full-psycho mode.

not saying which is better, but be sure you know want you want from it, and don't be a fucking hypocrite about it

>there's plenty of "successful" semi-psychopaths around using meditation to go into full-psycho mode.

I don't even know what you're trying to say.

meditation can be used to suppress a natural aversion to harming other human beings

Veeky Forums guided me into reading mindfulness in plain english. Its full o fucking platitudes and pseudo scientific bullshit. You'd do way better looking around online for different sources (still interested in a decent oversight of traditions and techniques).
I meditate about half an hour a day, planning to get more serious. But right now its just a stress reducing factor in my life. Never reached a that first Jhana, but got close. During my vacation i meditate for an hour a few times and ive never felt so relaxed. Worth looking into anons!

See, how is this not delusional?

> complains about pseudoscience
> proceeds to Jhanabana

My impression of practitioners are basically adult chuunibyou. Seeing meditation as some kind os special power.

I don't want to come across as excessively critical but I would like to stress the importance of tempering one's enthusiasm when describing the meditation practice and one's own 'attainments' or the various benefits one has gained.
The danger of doing so is to promote an incorrect mindset in a beginner towards the meditation practice. The essence of meditation is not to meditate for some goal ( "I wanna become enlightened, I wanna reach this or that jhana"), because in order to be clearly in the present and mindful during meditation one should not harbor desire. Beginners with such expectations may be underwhelmed or put off by the sheer mundaneness of the practice. Yes, you just sit there and observe, and your reaction may be that it is really tedious and boring to just sit there, and that's kind of the point.

what is it more delusional than anything else in life? the brain is plastic, there's no delusion in changing, just like you can learn stuff you can modify your behavior

>mindfulness

uh-huh

Mindfulness is an industry. Fuck off
Mindfulness is not meditation
Don't fall for the normie mindfulness meme

>what is it more delusional than anything else in life?
Yes

"Mindfulness in Plain English" is a great start. Read it 3 years ago and still remember its lessons today.

Meditation is just a convoluted version of what they used to call "nap time" during most of our kindergarten days.
Not saying it isn't beneficial, just that you pretty much get the same results by taking it easy for ten to fifteen minutes once or twice during the day without complicating things with overly specific breathing techniques, visualizations or mantras.

meditation can reinforce a shitty ego. look at all the assholes in TM.

Is it true I can get psychic powers from mastering the fourth Jhana?

Supranormal powers (siddhis) are said to be a natural consequence of high level meditation in several traditions, whether that is actually the case I can't actually confirm.

He was being sarcastic. Unless you're too.

I sometimes chant Hare Krishna on beads, but it's been some time now. The books I've been reading from are Bhagavad-Gita as It is, Prabhupada, and Teachings of Lord Caitanya, as well as some smaller booklets.

Not sure how much I believe about it, but I'd like to make some prasadam and eat tomorrow, it's the appearance day of Srila Prabhupada.

>siddhis
god I wish I had those to have a comfy life

Read this book:

integrateddaniel.info/book/

It's free and more informative than 90% of the shit on the market.

I'm a big fan of Brad Warner's books.

Start with Hardcore Zen

Err, he seems like a batshit insane person.

Veeky Forums, can you please teach me on why Veeky Forums doesn't have a board for spirituality and religion?

...

"Shoes Outside the Door" is a pretty readable account of such a journey.

This board isn't about spirituality and religion.

kek

in theory is not about spirituality and religion like is not about shelves, but we all know the reality of things

if you want to talk about spirituality and religion you might as well go to /x/ and if you want to talk about shelves you might as well come here

Just checked /x/. It's scary.

Meditate is just not thinking.

For all the skeptics and naysayers and people who don't think of meditation as a serious practice, I welcome you to give it a serious chance, then report back to lit with your experiences.

So, how to give it a serious shot? Visit link related, and sign up for a free ten day class. It's free, even.

dhamma.org/en-US/index

Be warned: If you've balls cumbersome enough to actually go through with this, follow instructions carefully, and do not stray from them. This practice is not for faggots who think meditation is play time: you will learn to consciously engage your nervous system. This can benefit you, or fuck you up depending on whether or not you adhere to the instructions given.

and all the psuedo-meditation practitioners on Veeky Forums

That comes from the formless realms aka the fifth-eight jhanas.
>tfw I took the bait

Just read the canon itself. Bhikku Bodhi makes a lot of good books on the subject. You don't really need anything else, unless you're into zen or something.

It's not about being sceptic. I honestly thing the claims above are a sign of mental ilness.

People throw around the idea of "mental illness" far too frequently without even the least forethought. Can you define "mental wellness" or put mental illness or mental wellness on a scale that's easily sensible? Western medicine or science really is still yet to understand consciousness or the nervous system as a complete system.

Currently it's basic as fuck. Happy? You're well. Unhappy? Unwell. Why happy? Hormone imbalance in your favor. Why unhappy? Hormone balance out of your favor. Suicidal? Take five of these pills. If you don't get better, take ten. Anhedonia? Better take fifteen.

It's ridiculous to the point where giving eastern magick a shot isn't a stupid idea.

I guess you're one dedicated troll. Have fun with your life. Sad.

That's not true.

>With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, he directs and inclines it to the modes of [supranormal powers].

That whole string of qualities refers to the 4th rupa jhana.
If you read the canon the Buddha doesn't even fuck all that much with the formless jhanas. They're unnecessary, and not recommended.

Because Veeky Forums would instantly ruin it with threads like this.

We (Veeky Forums) do it on Veeky Forums too, It's impossible to have any discussion without McBuddhists and Wonton Daoists shitting up the place.

Funnily enough I've seen Christian threads on /pol/ produce some legitimately top tier discussion that wouldn't be out of place in a theology dissertation.

Spend a few weeks studying mysticism from any chosen religion or esoteric tradition. I can recommend Jewish Kabbalah, Vajrayana/Zen Buddhism, Sufi Islam and Hermeticism. When you've studied one of those for a bit, look at how they meditate and simply practise that.

For example on the frontage right now:

>why Veeky Forums doesn't have a board for spirituality and religion

>buddhist books will tell you that compassion and meditation are linked, but i don't think that's true unless you link it yourself from the beginning
They are linked. You can't meditate and be a shitty person. It doesn't work that way. I would say that secularists have taken the term "meditation" and perverted it (not out of malice, but nonetheless). Meditation in its purest form is God speaking to you. The way you are supposed to speak to God through prayer but can also be bad at that (like me, I hate praying).

>there's plenty of "successful" semi-psychopaths around using meditation to go into full-psycho mode.
Wrong. I know exactly what you're referring to, even if you think I don't, and you're still wrong. People with bipolarity or some other psycho-social disorder need something other than meditation or prayer. At some point medical intervention is a necessity. You can't stop someone set on suicide with talk, for instance. Those people already have something wrong with them. I know because I had something like that, and I tried to meditate out of it. Meditation for someone insincere is even worse than not meditating.

That's why compassion, selflessness, is so important. You can't expect to attune yourself with nature and the astral, when you have some agenda that you're hiding so deeply inside yourself that you can't see the forest for the trees. Socializing and doing good forces people to introspect and find stuff that they would never be able to about themselves in a million years otherwise.

i wasn't referring to mentally ill people meditating

I was speaking about stuff like this:

thezensite.com/ZenBookReviews/ZenAtWar_Vlad.htm
“The sword is generally associated with killing, and most of us wonder how it came into connection with Zen, which is a school of Buddhism teaching the gospel of mercy. The fact is that the art of swordsmanship distinguishes between the sword that kills and the sword that gives life. The one that is used by a technician cannot go any further than killing, for he never appeals to the sword unless he intends to kill. The case is altogether different for the one who is compelled to lift the sword. For it is really not he but the sword itself that does the killing. He had no desire to do harm to anybody, but the enemy appears and makes himself a victim. It is as though the sword performs automatically its function of justice, which is the function of mercy. . . . When the sword is expected to play this sort of role in human life, it is no more a weapon of selfdefense or an instrument of killing, and the swordsman turns into an artist of the first grade, engaged in producing a work of genuine originality.”

Buddhism is inherently moral but meditation is not. Most Buddhist teachers will teach morality (Śīla) along with meditation, they won't just make you sit and expect you to figure it out yourself.

Oh shit, have been to one of those classes. I only made it to day seven because I started to get anxiety. It's literally ten hours of meditation a day. Also, I didn't exactly listen to the teachers guidelines. Thought it would be a meme... It wasn't.

>>integrateddaniel.info/book/
>
>It's free and more informative than 90% of the shit on the market.
it is the vissudimagga explained to normies

better picture

You guys are insane.

fuck, you're right. How could I forget that?

hahaha what the fuck

The fact that you think that is a troll shows exactly why you think calling such things "signs of mental illness" is even comprehensible. It literally makes no sense as a comment or a criticism, and that user's post was spot on.

Pull your head way out from your ass and you might learn something one day.

...

Meditation is for plebs who think that there is a self to be transformed in adherence to some arbitrary spiritual goal.

get out edgelord

just sit around like a dog when you want to don't make up pretentious snake oil memes about it silly

What's the point of meditation if it doesn't provide any moral guidance?
...I'm relaxed. Now what?

Meditation gave me DPD

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization_disorder

try to gain insight into why you're not satisfied by being relaxed.

You just solved all your problems and therefore no longer need moral guidance.

If you still have problems and desires you're not chill enough, keep meditating.

forreal?

Are you guys just being an idiot? Seriously, supernatural shit on Veeky Forums. I thought /x/ was made for those cuckoos.

Meditation is not some harmless feelgood thing. It's psychological suicide.

I get symptoms like this when I meditate for prolonged periods of time.

Am I doing it right or should I stop?

sounds like bullshit to me

back in the day when i used to meditate a lot i lost all sense of my body and had vivid hallucinations desu and ended up with a sort of detached dreamy high that would last for a good while afterwards

did it fuck you up? did you recover?

i feel like i can still easily summon that detached feeling or go into trancelike states when i try and sometimes it gets me spontaneously but i wouldn't say it's ruined me or something like that. i think it mostly happens in anxious situations where i just zone out into far away mode as a sort of psychological defense mechanism.

the deep meditation itself felt very similar to when i tried wake induced lucid dreaming which was even more spooky. i would keep very still and then there was a period of twitching and afterwards a falling/moving sensation followed by bodylessness, but the real strange thing was that i would sometimes go into rapid eye movement while still conscious and awake. never really broke into dreamland while awake though.

that sounds cool as shit actually

i just wish i could break on through to the other side

i had a handful of lucid dreams before but they were always accidental and never lasted long

>into rapid eye movement while still conscious
You're not far, but probably still too body-aware. Not to say that you ever get completely untethered, of course, but don't pursue those perceptions and you'll get there before you can say Tamaghis.

There's no other side.
Meditating can actually lead people to experience DP/DR, I've had it, but I think it depends on the person's state of mind. You're not going to get anything/anywhere "spiritually" from meditation though, but it has benefits.

If this is straight up going to be about meditation, you should probably just go to /x/ and enjoy the tinfoil hattery. I browse over there sometimes and they seem to have the tricks of the trade down pat.

>It's psychological suicide.
this. it is not for normies

This is by far the most retarded thread on Veeky Forums.

I know you are but what am I?

I had read Ajahn Chah say not to worry about what the books say as it never happens that way anyway, from what he said he didn’t know much about jhanas or altered states either until it happened to him and what he described. Though Ajahn Chah’s experience sounded like a far more powerful and deeper experience than mine, there were some similarities. He never described (named) his experience into any traditional Buddhist context in his narrative, and I have none for mine as the closest thing I am aware of is the 5th Jhana – but from what I’ve read you can’t “jump” Jhana’s more than one or two levels.

I had been doing samatha meditation, unlike the more normal long slow quieting of my mind, I got into a deep concentration quickly. I found that unlike normal, I was tight; I had to continuously make a conscious effort to relax my arms, hands, and legs. I began rocking and turned my concentration from breath to my mind and the peace that was there. I made a mental effort to remember that all of the small very quiet thoughts and images left (vapors of thoughts) were just mental constructs and were not real until the thoughts were vapors of vapors. I knew intuitively that absolute peace was almost uncovered and made a very slight mental exertion to push into it.. The state was very near total quiet and peace. It was at the most peaceful place a consciousness could be within the realm of my experience. I sensed a piece material comprising a wall, and they started vibrating very hard and as it vibrated it cracked and intuitively I pressed on that and it shattered. . I know the material, pressing, and shattering I experienced was also a mental construct and not real.. I think it was my thinking mind trying to create something to make sense out of something that doesn’t work in a thinking world, a portal to something beyond thinking. Things completely flat lined, absolute peace, incredibly vast space, just a consciousness in space without limit. I had a meditation timer on and it made a chime so I know that I was in this state for about 20 minutes which I did hear from what seemed a great distance away. I had no sensations of my body, no pain, physical sensations, no breathing, and almost no sound. Then my mind just took itself back, I made no effort to stay or go.

This experience was almost identical to the one that happened to me about 10 years before. The difference was with the ten years old experience I remember coming out if it with a powerful epiphany “It’s all true” about the dharma as I had experienced some doubt that “all this Buddhist meditation stuff” could be some clever parlor mind game and that I had wasted years practicing.. I had no doubt of the truth. This time I didn’t have that epiphany, but a whole lot of the permanent deep seated stress (PTSD) of many events events of the last 10 years were gone (2 long term unemployment experiences, complete loss of wealth, near homelessness, the drug addiction of one of my kids, and divorce).

I think I messed myself up a bit by meditating without guidance, while being moderately depressed and in an existential crisis. So it was partly just plain escapism.

Meditation probably works better for adults who have a strongly defined identity. If I'm not mistaken some wise Buddhist guy even suggested that without a strong ego you won't experience enlightenment.

On a level I just can't avoid the nihilism and extreme relativism of meditation/Buddhism.
"Deep down", life isn't beautiful and full of rainbows and love. It's a mess full of everything, at best you realize that it's absurd, which stops you from taking it too seriously and being so attached and having fears and desires.

how's this for an introduction? I'm planning to read it soon

Very good. I've been meditating for two years and just read the book recently. It was a good refresher on the ideas of meditation. Also, an interesting book on spirituality in general.

Technically meditation teaches there is no stable self, it's supposed to make you less self-centred.

to be honest I don't think you become fully detached from reality, I think it's more like seeing things for what they are with no judgement. Ideally you are more in touch with reality than ever. I also don't think the point is 'there is nothing', it's more that everything is temporary. Things don't really have any meaning because they pass, but at the same time that's the only thing that is a thing so you can only see the moment for what it is.
NOt that I am really enlightened or anything, but that's how i see it.

does the awake rem always precede dream entry?

i meant the other side as in the dreamworld when pursuing lucid dreams

Are you still practising today?

Have you ever considered taking vows?

Actually, this. While meditating, you learn to not think thoughts other than these about your meditation object. It may sound strange, but in regular life you think about different shit a lot, which becomes rather obvious after you start meditating. And sometimes, being able to stop thinking about one thing or another is a very useful skill. That's it.

>awake rem always precede dream entry?
No, you don't have to be aware of it. You don't even need to be in REM, technically (though I would assume REM starts when you get full visual integration, which what you think of as lucid dreaming naturally leads towards, if not requires)

>seeing things for what they are with no judgement. Ideally you are more in touch with reality than ever.

The problem is that it's not possible to do that. There is no objective reality separate from the subject that you can experience.

You can see through some social conditioning, but that's about it.

Senpai, which was the highest jhana state you've been in? I've been in first or second accidentally a few times and the desire to experience that ecstasy again has been keeping me from actually attaining it. Any suggestions?

Meant to write F A M, but the 5chins are being funny again.

>that ecstasy again has been keeping me from actually attaining it.
then reflect on the right view, the noble truths

I think you're missing the point somewhat, seeing through some social conditioning could fall under "being more in touch with reality". There is not a distinction being made here about "subjective reality" vs "objective reality" where one gets in touch with the latter, rather you might describe it as tuning the tools which facilitate your experience of reality.

The highest state I've been? Must have been Montana.

wtf lmao
you people have it all wrong

meditation isn't about nihilism
wtf

its about loving the simple things in life, about accepting suffering as a normal everyday part of life that you cant avoid, about having compassion for your fellow man. I never understood this hippy garbage involving drugs and "entering a psychedelic state of mind"
NO
IT MAKE NO SENSE

look at this dog