What do you think of meditation as a simple form of practicing mental discipline?
I have read of meditations that have you focus on one thought often a mantra or an image. I think of this as practicing a steady focus or concentration for long periods of time.
I have read of meditations where in you are supposed to thin of nothing at all, banish all thoughts from your mind. This form of meditation would practice the ability to not think unproductive thoughts to not be distracted by new ideas when you have a problem at hand.
Can you think of other meditation types that practice other mental skills?
Are there any resources that take this kind of approach to meditation in general?
Can you think of other meditation types that practice other mental skills?
Meditating on physical processes such as breathing and heartbeat is something I find useful. Gaining that sort of self awareness does wonders for maintaining emotional control too, the mind/body relationship being what it is.
In chapter one of The Complete Yoga Book, James Hewitt presents a nine-category classification scheme.
Jnana yoga: union by knowledge;
Bhakti yoga: union by love and devotion;
Karma yoga: union by action and service;
Mantra yoga: union by voice and sound;
Yantra yoga: union by vision and form;
Laya and Kundaline yoga: union by arousal of latent psychic nerve force;
Tantric yoga: union by physiological and sexual discipline;
Hatha yoga: union by mastery of body and breath;
Raya yoga: union by mental mastery.
Hewitt’s book is a terrific resource. He has figures of hundreds of postures. He is mostly rational about it and cautious about superstition and so forth.
There are a number of westernized bastardized things called yoga which are absolutely not yoga. Joseph Campbell famously described his primary “yoga regimen” as the “yoga of underlining sentences in books”.
The distinction which Campbell lost is that in meditation one is looking within, that the resources are there inside you. The guideline might be something like Feynman’s dictum that the single most important scientific fact is “everything is made out of atoms”, or William Blake’s poetic metaphor that the whole world is encapsulated in a grain of sand and all of eternity is contained within an hour.
For the techniques of concentration, emptying, and focusing on a bodily process mentioned by wedrifid, I operate under the assumption that they benefit some simple skill like mentioned above. I operate under this assumption because relationship seems straight forward much like exercises and muscle strength, though the later is much easier to much quantitatively.
I would like to see a book/article where meditation x causes benefit in skill y measured quantitatively with method z. Baring this extreme it might still be helpful to have a book/article that makes as simple and direct connection between the form of meditation and benefit.
I currently have the impression, from your post, that Hewitt’s book does not preform either of the two above approaches.
I would like to see a book/article where meditation x causes benefit in skill y measured quantitatively with method z.
I have searched for this and not found it. Hewitt’s book is the best at describing the most complete spectrum of what is possible I have read. There are no measurements in there.
The guy who may have done the most quantitative studies is Charles Tart. Tart is an academic psychologist whose undergrad was in Electrical Engineering. I found his books States of Consciousness and Altered States of Consciousness useful. I don’t remember anything in there remotely like “zen ups your IQ” and “tantra benefits your intellectual endurance”.
I am doubtful that this is a well-posed line of inquiry. People report from their own experience that they find meditation benefits their anxiety level or their attention span or their recall ability (memory theater, method of loci are also closely connected to meditation mechanically) or whatever, but: i) these are not merely anecdotal reports but they are reports of incidental benefits of mostly unintended consequences and ii) if you look at the research on intelligence measurement or intellectual performance measurement you are very likely to find processes which provide more benefit with less effort than the use of meditation for these specific benefits. Monks do not meditate for any payoff of this sort. They meditate for its own sake. When I started meditating many years ago, my motivation was to use it as a mental health hygiene practice; this is long in the past. I regularly meditate now strictly for its own sake and if it fully worth my time or if it is a complete waste of time is a meaningless question. I would like to accumulate utility units as much as anybody, but 61.81818% of the maximum possible utility units ought to be plenty as near as I can figure.
I am doubtful that this is a well-posed line of inquiry.
I want to isolate and extract useful practices of meditation from the mysticism that often surrounds it. Maybe you can not call it meditation afterwards but it will still fall under the heading mental exercise perhaps. I am more interested in discussing a new line of conversation starting with my next question.
I regularly meditate now strictly for its own sake and if it fully worth my time or if it is a complete waste of time is a meaningless question.
What is your reasoning for not inspecting the usefulness of meditation as part of your life?
What is your reasoning for not inspecting the usefulness of meditation as part of your life?
Short answer: I do not know.
A (bit longer) elaboration: I claim to be a Rationalist to the extent that my experience is 100% consistent with rationalism being the single most valuable tool to solving the problems I have had to try and solve so far in my years of living. In the words of Daniel Robinson, rational thought is the thread of Ariadne by which we might escape from the many labyrinths, problems, which our lives in this world pose to us. He considers it our greatest debt to the Greeks.
It is not a panacea. It has little power for any love / sex relationship I have ever been involved in, for example. Meditation, in my experience, is also highly resistant to rational analysis or even empirical analysis beyond a crude treatment. I can be such a ruthless skeptic that I have said that skeptics in general are incapable of discerning their own viewpoint to be self-contradictory. I am skeptical that meditation is a proper discussion subject for this board, but I noticed the interest in the topic when it was posted and discussed previously, so I have tried to present something systematic (although not entirely rational) regarding my own experience.
This issue of “usefulness of meditation” makes little sense to me; but my interest in my meditation has continued for many years and I anticipate it will continue to do so for many more. I suspect many will find my elaborate answer pussyfooting so I will repeat and emphasize my short answer above: I do not know.
I believe I have a few of the same questions that you have.
What do you think of meditation as a simple form of practicing mental discipline?
I have read of meditations that have you focus on one thought often a mantra or an image. I think of this as practicing a steady focus or concentration for long periods of time.
I have read of meditations where in you are supposed to thin of nothing at all, banish all thoughts from your mind. This form of meditation would practice the ability to not think unproductive thoughts to not be distracted by new ideas when you have a problem at hand.
Can you think of other meditation types that practice other mental skills?
Are there any resources that take this kind of approach to meditation in general?
Meditating on physical processes such as breathing and heartbeat is something I find useful. Gaining that sort of self awareness does wonders for maintaining emotional control too, the mind/body relationship being what it is.
In chapter one of The Complete Yoga Book, James Hewitt presents a nine-category classification scheme.
Jnana yoga: union by knowledge;
Bhakti yoga: union by love and devotion;
Karma yoga: union by action and service;
Mantra yoga: union by voice and sound;
Yantra yoga: union by vision and form;
Laya and Kundaline yoga: union by arousal of latent psychic nerve force;
Tantric yoga: union by physiological and sexual discipline;
Hatha yoga: union by mastery of body and breath;
Raya yoga: union by mental mastery.
Hewitt’s book is a terrific resource. He has figures of hundreds of postures. He is mostly rational about it and cautious about superstition and so forth.
There are a number of westernized bastardized things called yoga which are absolutely not yoga. Joseph Campbell famously described his primary “yoga regimen” as the “yoga of underlining sentences in books”.
The distinction which Campbell lost is that in meditation one is looking within, that the resources are there inside you. The guideline might be something like Feynman’s dictum that the single most important scientific fact is “everything is made out of atoms”, or William Blake’s poetic metaphor that the whole world is encapsulated in a grain of sand and all of eternity is contained within an hour.
For the techniques of concentration, emptying, and focusing on a bodily process mentioned by wedrifid, I operate under the assumption that they benefit some simple skill like mentioned above. I operate under this assumption because relationship seems straight forward much like exercises and muscle strength, though the later is much easier to much quantitatively.
I would like to see a book/article where meditation x causes benefit in skill y measured quantitatively with method z. Baring this extreme it might still be helpful to have a book/article that makes as simple and direct connection between the form of meditation and benefit.
I currently have the impression, from your post, that Hewitt’s book does not preform either of the two above approaches.
I have searched for this and not found it. Hewitt’s book is the best at describing the most complete spectrum of what is possible I have read. There are no measurements in there.
The guy who may have done the most quantitative studies is Charles Tart. Tart is an academic psychologist whose undergrad was in Electrical Engineering. I found his books States of Consciousness and Altered States of Consciousness useful. I don’t remember anything in there remotely like “zen ups your IQ” and “tantra benefits your intellectual endurance”.
I am doubtful that this is a well-posed line of inquiry. People report from their own experience that they find meditation benefits their anxiety level or their attention span or their recall ability (memory theater, method of loci are also closely connected to meditation mechanically) or whatever, but: i) these are not merely anecdotal reports but they are reports of incidental benefits of mostly unintended consequences and ii) if you look at the research on intelligence measurement or intellectual performance measurement you are very likely to find processes which provide more benefit with less effort than the use of meditation for these specific benefits. Monks do not meditate for any payoff of this sort. They meditate for its own sake. When I started meditating many years ago, my motivation was to use it as a mental health hygiene practice; this is long in the past. I regularly meditate now strictly for its own sake and if it fully worth my time or if it is a complete waste of time is a meaningless question. I would like to accumulate utility units as much as anybody, but 61.81818% of the maximum possible utility units ought to be plenty as near as I can figure.
I want to isolate and extract useful practices of meditation from the mysticism that often surrounds it. Maybe you can not call it meditation afterwards but it will still fall under the heading mental exercise perhaps. I am more interested in discussing a new line of conversation starting with my next question.
What is your reasoning for not inspecting the usefulness of meditation as part of your life?
Short answer: I do not know.
A (bit longer) elaboration: I claim to be a Rationalist to the extent that my experience is 100% consistent with rationalism being the single most valuable tool to solving the problems I have had to try and solve so far in my years of living. In the words of Daniel Robinson, rational thought is the thread of Ariadne by which we might escape from the many labyrinths, problems, which our lives in this world pose to us. He considers it our greatest debt to the Greeks.
It is not a panacea. It has little power for any love / sex relationship I have ever been involved in, for example. Meditation, in my experience, is also highly resistant to rational analysis or even empirical analysis beyond a crude treatment. I can be such a ruthless skeptic that I have said that skeptics in general are incapable of discerning their own viewpoint to be self-contradictory. I am skeptical that meditation is a proper discussion subject for this board, but I noticed the interest in the topic when it was posted and discussed previously, so I have tried to present something systematic (although not entirely rational) regarding my own experience.
This issue of “usefulness of meditation” makes little sense to me; but my interest in my meditation has continued for many years and I anticipate it will continue to do so for many more. I suspect many will find my elaborate answer pussyfooting so I will repeat and emphasize my short answer above: I do not know.
I believe I have a few of the same questions that you have.