How does one meditate?Is there a proper,correct way to do it,or is it just sitting and breathing?Are there more effective methods of doing it?Ive seen quite a few people on here claiming they meditate,as a way to improve focus while reading.As someone that doesnt have acces to drugs like adderal and ritalin,how can i improve my reading with meditation if at all?
Meditation
Connor Evans
Eli Kelly
it develops your pre frontal cortex aka higher decision making. been doing mindfulness for about 6 years. Eckhart tolle is cool for beginners. yes its literally sitting and breathing technically.
Cooper King
Look into mindfulness
Justin Scott
>How does one meditate?
You just sit there
>Is there a proper,correct way to do it,or is it just sitting and breathing?
Yes to both
Suzuki's stupid frog analogies stuck with me the best, so maybe check him out.
Hunter Reed
urbandharma.org
Remember to practice your sitting posture. It's a pain in the ass at first, but worth it.
Colton Carter
Look into suicide
Carter Long
It's not that difficult but requires some practice.
It doesn't really matter if you sit or lie down. (well if you easily fall asleep you should probably sit)
The point is to quiet the chatter in your mind.
That's basically it.
Watching your breathing is recommended because if you pay attention to your breath you have atleast something to focus on something other than your inner monologue.
If a thought arises and you cath yourself drifting away don't grow frustrated. Just focus your attention on something that is not thinking.
Another way to think of meditation that works for me is, that you are an observer of your thoughts and you don't identify with them.
This means you are aware of a thought arising.
The interesting thing that will happen is that you realize that you are not your thoughts, as soon as you watch one perticular thought it disappears.
Your brain will throw some other idea your way, trying to keep itself occupied but if you manage to stay the observer it will disappear again.
Lucas Hall
Is meditation dangerous? I wanna do it to alleviate some psychotic and anxiac tendencies, but from what i've read some places the result can easily be opposite.
Kevin Ortiz
lay on your bed.
listen to this:
youtube.com
Landon Richardson
The point is not to quiet the chatter, it is a result.
Sit in a posture that's comfortable or lay down and become aware of your breath, feel your breath fill you up and how it goes out.
Best is to start with guided meditations.
If you sit in silence this is called samadhi which is actually pretty advanced. The teachings of Shiva call out several meditational states, simply being lost in a book and zoning out your envoirment is actually one of the meditational states you can achieve.
Matthew Watson
It isn't dangerous, but if you suffer from psychosis you should take it slow, look up grounding meditations guided on youtube, start with that untill you feel like you have a solid basis to build on.
Why meditation can have opposite effects is because people who suffer from psychosis get more involved with their symptons whilst they should just ingore it and relax
Juan Wood
his books are the best for a novice. Theravada master race
Oliver Rodriguez
its ridiculous. the average person has 10 thousand thoughts a day that are aimless. most thinking unless its for working out problems is useless. for beginners remember there isnt a such thing as "trying" to meditate. either you are or you aren't. id highly recommend it to anybody.
Brandon Sanchez
Focus on your breathing and then notice what thoughts are popping up in your head, then let it go.
Michael Roberts
feeling happiness from the inside possibly gave me a pretty severe existential crisis in 2014
Colton Scott
The same thought may appear many times btw.
Jaxon Turner
I'm afraid this doesn't make sense to me.
Kayden Rodriguez
sorry ive been doing it for years. when you just feel happy consistently from meditation it can fuck with your identity because you just feel happy irregardless of anything else. money girls consumerism etc
Evan Turner
That's quite a problem to have. Were you happy during this existential crisis?
Luis Perry
god no. it was awful. brutal. ive researched it. they call it dark night of the soul it meditation jargon. it was only afterwards inner happiness was cemented. i need to goto a proper meditation teacher because im piecing it together myself.
Michael Cooper
If I had to say what the "point" of meditation is, it's to feel yourself in the present moment and be aware of what it's in the present moment.
Buddhist meditation takes that concept and goes in many directions ("while noticing your breathe and being in the present moment, focus on a key concept in Buddhism"), but in the simplest sense, you need only stay in the present moment and note what's in the present moment (i.e. your breath, your body, and your thoughts).
Arguably, the reason why this is useful is because of how time is so wonky to living beings. Because we experience time in such an elastic way -- where many things seem to just zoom by, and potentially many more things seem to take ages -- being able to live and note the actual present moment helps us take the good and the bad in stride.
An example of "being in + noticing the present" is with thoughts. Frequently, we can feel like our thoughts define us, but in actuality, it's only because we're carrying those thoughts and continually engaging with those thoughts across various moments.
For instance, say you wake up one day and you're nervous about a date you have at night: normally, you'd carry nervous and anxious thoughts all throughout the day, which might make you perform your activities during the day badly or might make you a nervous wreck before the date itself. With a "trained" mind, you might still have a similar number of "intrusive" thoughts about the date throughout the day, but you'll be aware enough not to engage with them. Rather, you'll choose to focus on the present moment, with whatever task you have. Similarly, when you do get around to planning and thinking about the date, you'll be able to focus on whatever matters now, rather than every little detail that might not heavily matter until the future.
The same idea applies with reading, I find. You'll be able to devote your full attention to it, soaking it up with few extraneous thoughts in the present moment.
Jordan Diaz
I have tried all the methods and have found a mixture of Jnana Yoga/Tantra/Dzogchen to be the most impactful. Vipisanna can work for calming the mind as well.
My meditation now involves using my heart chakra to fill my infinitely spacious awareness, which creates an analogue to the awareness of God who is an ocean of bliss.
Zachary Lee
dissolved/be absorbed into the love of God. Peace is a nice state, but it becomes constant/immediate after like 500hrs. Imagine instead sitting in the fucking sun, whole body orgasm bliss, light before it refracts. This love is the always there, the clear light that impregnates all.
Hudson Sanchez
oh didnt see this, basically the same idea. The heart chakra can contain universes. Very glad to see a brother. Maybe we made eye contact in Vietnamese heroin den 50 years ago, wondering what this would would become as our bodies entered a china white embrace. Now, sans needles, the real for the poppy flower but digital letters for eyes –there seems something to say...a phrase of encouragement from one deep sea diver to another under the watchful eyes of all these shore sitters. I only pray that we have the strength to worship this ocean for its own sake.
Kayden Gomez
This topic periodically crops up, either on /adv/, Veeky Forums, or Veeky Forums, so may as well dump a pack of audio guided meditations for those trying to get into meditation who don't have the benefit of a teacher in-person or a local class: mediafire.com
there's also this handy e-book: meditationexpert.com
Ryder Hill
>I only pray that we have the strength to worship this ocean for its own sake.
Indeed. The truth shall set us free.
Jayden Turner
OP the term meditation, as used by Descartes, is really a misnomer for most "eastern" varieties of what we've come to call meditation, from Buddhist shamatha-vipasyana to Daoist inner alchemy.
Various forms of "meditation" have been crafted to fit with late-Protestant psychoanalytically oriented anthropologies, with MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) being quite fashionable right now as a form of "secular" meditation. It's essentially just liberal protestant prayer discourse in 21st century scientistic garb.
Most forms of traditional "meditation" do in fact begin with a phase of stilling the mind - this is shamatha in Buddhist-Sanskrit meditation traditions, or ding in Chinese ones (which were heavily influenced by the Buddhist-Sanskrit traditions). Here you'd just sit in either full lotus, half lotus, or modified burmese posture, and count your breaths - inhaling one, exhaling one, inhaling two, exhaling two, etc. up to ten, then back again. Keep expanding the range. This is the same in some Daoist methodologies.
That is the prerequisite for any further "meditation" praxis. For classical sources, look up the Anapanasati Sutta, one of the earliest attested Buddhist scriptures (An Shigao's translation is from the second century). On the Chinese side, you might look at the Nei Ye chapter of the Guanzi for fundamental meditation guidelines.
Jacob Bell
Letting go means roughly to not care,
It's when you hold no emotional attachment.
It's when you are willing and allowing yourself to not get caught up in something.
Though meditation is about learning and knows many different levels. So It wouldn't be good to tell a beginner about advanced meditation as that will only confuse yoy and make it harder.
Start out, and get into philosophy of the mind more. also psychology