http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/MaryGarden.html

check it out, opinions?

For someone new to meditation (no one here), I'd say:

-- Only meditate when it feels natural, comfortable and easy for you to do it. In other words, if you can sit still and be genuinely comfortable in your own skin doing absolutely nothing, that's the time to consider it. Don't do meditation to "fix" anything in your life.

-- In order to be genuinely comfortable in your own skin, first practice self-acceptance or self-building exercises, or both preferably. Self-building = achievement and external validation.

-- Understand that deeper levels of meditation are going to cause two potentially destabilizing things to occur:

1. repressed unconscious material coming to the surface. If self-acceptance has been practised, the material should be less dense and frightening. Understanding that it's going to happen is also important as preparation. Being unprepared would be too tricky, like a bad drug trip resulting in ongoing anxiety and flashbacks.

2. your self might start to dissolve, and because this is terrifying, great courage and careful guidance is needed.

Well, I think it's important to acknowledge how many assumptions people often bring along with them into practice about 'what meditation is', which are often incredibly partial:



All the false dichotomies embodied uncritically in Mary's evaluation of her experience! Now, surely there are reasons for these sorts of beliefs, some of which are rooted in ancient worldviews of certain paths, such as views which disparage conditioned nature (as uncritically opposed to unconditioned); others of which are rooted in the sociological dynamics of certain lineages, dynamics such as celibacy or other renunciate methods (as those dynamics are entwined with the metaphysics), and some of which are rooted more in recent Western worldviews of the subcultures from our own societies which have been attracted to forming identities around practice, enlightenment, and so forth.

My impression is that she has a very narrow definition of what practice entails, a very superficial and uncritical view of the complexities of the intersection between Western subcultures which have been historically attracted to 'Eastern Spirituality' and the many different practice lineages those subcultures encountered. This narrow definition then goes on to color her personal narrative, her social critique and her response to research. I mean, this extreme dichotomy between 'worldly life' and 'transcendence' is just so hilariously provincial in some ways, although understandable in others. But why anyone would want to practice in the context of such a view has always been beyond me. At least, those are some immediate responses.

What do you think, Mike?

"If one isn't after enlightenment or spiritual experiences, then I can't help thinking that exercise may be better for physical and mental well being than meditation. I just love my morning swims in the local pool."

If exercise such as swimming can help one deal with physical and mental problems, then I don't think that there is a need for meditation. I think people who don't have any problems don't begin to meditate, it is mostly those with some problems who begin to meditate and keep at it until they can manage their problems. Afterwards, they may find that just a morning swim can help them manage their lives good enough.

One thing for certain - swimming is great!

mmm, I do definitely think there's a different character to every meditation technique, vipassana is for me the most disturbing usually, partly because the nature of the object is so easy to habitually turn towards, which both affords insight and tneds to be a disturbing experience. After some time especially mindfulness of breathing can't really be turned off, or at least it takes a conscious effort not to notice it in the background. I'm undecided for myself whether I think meditation's necessary or if there's really even a choice after a certain point. I mean outside of "formal" meditation noticing goes on all the time. I don't know anymore if the kind of raw truth meditation affords is necessarily happiness, I mean it tends to "swallow" thoughts after a while, makes being social in a loose and easy way somewhat difficult. I definitely don't think it's been truthfully represented in our culture.

I mean to further elaborate on what I'm saying, I'll use today as an example - I'm walking around feeling emotionally just dead..like I want to feel this and that and I want to feel a little bit of others' sorrow, and I'm just..blank. I feel kind of like a robot, or like my inner voice is suffocating under pillows in my head. It's so bad I can't even really be sad about it or surprised. And what did I do last night? Several hours of informal vipassana sitting. I'm telling you guys, it fucks people up, and badly sometimes. The only reason I'm able to cope with it is because I'm used to often having this feeling, and I know how to avoid spilling bad effects onto others and actually on the contrary trying to be a nice guy. My friend's father just died Friday, and do you know what I feel and/or felt about it? Not much that I can tell. It's pretty horrifying. All I could do was try to comfort him and talk about it as much as he wanted to, and offer my support, but I didn't really genuinely feel that I could tell. I also don't seem to have "inner dialogue" anymore, like the only time I can generate verbal thoughts for the most part is when I'm actively thinking. The amount of inner silence is frightening. I miss that inner voice, I miss being annoyed, and I miss feeling all the time, good or bad or whatever in between. I miss having dead-end ambitions, the normal human game.

I don't need meditation, I need to drop the entire concept of meditation and everything connected to it, and try as best I can to cultivate actual empathy by living a normal life.

Mike if you've read any one of my posts in the last 2 years, you'd have the answer, because all my posts say the same thing. Self-acceptance is easy to apply and it cures depression/anxiety. "Trying your best" to be something that you're not (ie.empathetic) will get you deeper into trouble.

To be fair, getting rid of those is exactly the advertised effect that meditation is supposed to have, so you are a success story. You must have wanted to get rid of those things when you had them, or you wouldn't have started to meditate.

On the other hand, maybe metta/karuna practice could help counteract emotional deadness. I'm not speaking from experience, just making a guess. The Buddha explicitly taught it and your situation seems very relevant. Have you tried it?

I just finished reading Beyond Mindfulness In Plain English - a book that's supposed to be all about vipassana, but then in some new edition Bhante G saw the need and added a rather lengthy and detailed section on metta practice, which he suggests to do daily and with every sit. Good book by the way.

NA, he's numb to his emotions, not transcending them. Massive difference.

Have you gained AF?

That seems unlikely given that he feels fear and sorrow.

Mm, well I'll reply to this one but I'm actually replying to several of your replies.



To be fair, this point is absolutely true - I was obviously very unsatisfied with the noise, and yet the silence is also not so desirable, though perhaps easier to deal with, as in it allows for better reactions and makes me actually socially more successful in certain ways, if that makes any sense.

I have also tried metta practices on occasion, both the ones that Bhante G. samples in Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English and other just home-brewed intentions to go along with mantra chanting. At least in the case of mantra-usage it does work to a degree, though it hasn't created the level of loving-kindness, etc. that I want. I suppose that directly correlates to how much I practice it though.



This may be true, but smacks of a Buddhist story, a Buddhist narrative. You could be right that the only way through is continuing with this narrative, that the only way through is to keep doing a practice that seemingly has bad psychological effects with the belief that it pays off vastly in the long-term. That's a really huge if, though. You could be wrong and it doesn't lead to anything really good or worthwhile, at least not psychologically. I could just be turning myself into a vegetable. I think it's important to remember that these practices (i.e. Vipassana) were developed with the assumption that I'm a monk or nun living 2500 years ago in an agrarian society, and also with the assumption that social aspirations in the world would no longer be a priority, that I no longer want or need friends and relationships, that I don't need jobs or to make money. If the personality happens to be impaired or erased, well in that circumstance it'd be more or less fine and even expected. The question isn't if the practices eventually work, but if having the practices work is actually desirable and if they produce a much happier, heart-filled human being than came in at the beginning of the practice.

Mike had a good post about this earlier in the year.

There is no information in that post about any practice details. All I see is content: worrying about finding a teacher, worrying about mental states, worries about work, philosophizing about the nature of life, and no investigation of the true nature of the sensations that make all of this up, no mention of even equanimity, fear, misery, digust, reobservation or the "phenomenological" details to infer these stages from. No motivation to move up to equanimity to see what changes from there or even an understanding that all these weird symptoms could disappear in an instant through practice.

This is exhausting, I'm gonna go my own way.

Good luck, Mike. May you find a way which works for you.

If you think you're likely to persuade him with that line of argument, you lack insight. :-)

its worked on me plenty times. the thing that someone wants to hear - the intuitive thing - is also often the wrong thing in terms of progress on the path. in the end everyone has to practice their own practice though, persistence and faith are really, really important. i don't know if I am necessarily arguing with you but that is just my ongoing experience.

During certain moments the path can seem dark and endless with seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel, the most helpful moments for me during these times was when someone on here simply responded by saying "keep going." If you(Mike) need to take a break from formal sitting and alter your technique then do so, as I have often done, but keep going.