Untrained people (and semi-trained people like me) can’t sustain focus for extended amounts of time—even if I set my mind to the breath, it will slip away.
What I would say is that untrained people don’t sustain focus on their breath for extended amounts of time. When you introduce the word “can” you’re claiming more than just what is observed and making claims about what they would do in other counterfactuals too. If we’re careful with those counterfactual choices, I think the claim that they “can’t” turns out to be false.
The difference between “trying to try” and “trying on the object level” can be the difference between struggling for months and succeeding in seconds.
I do not understand what you mean with “There can be though, if that’s what you want”. Do you mean “It’s possible to will/train yourself to have a coherent self”?
Something like that, yeah.
Like, you might want to go get Chinese food but not spend your money. Your desires for Chinese food and money are tugging you in different directions rather than in one coherent direction. But it’s possible to make up your mind and coherently want to pay for the Chinese food or else not want to eat it. You have to recognize that you can’t have the food without paying the money, and figure out which of your new options you prefer.
Do this enough, and you become relatively more coherent.
I’ll answer to both your replies here. Sorry about any confusion that the deletion of my first reply caused.
It seems like your argument is roughly: 1) There’s a difference between “wanting to want” and “object-level wanting” 2) If I manage to create a strong object-level want, I will boost my attention without needing to coerce myself
With some extra ideas: * Having mistaken beliefs about what you want—ones not connected to revealed preference—is harmful, since it leads to self-delusion and stuckness. * Actually-viscerally-motivated people can sustain attention to a meditation object, even without much training
If my understanding is correct, then we are largely in agreement. You are highlighting coercive tendencies in my post, and I do believe that there’s great value in anchoring my wants in something visceral. My usage of “should” might point to an inner conflict that’s useful to resolve, and I will look into this.
However, this wasn’t the key thing I wanted to focus on in the post—I was more curious about how the difference between a third-person and a first-person perspective affects my meditation.
I’m also convinced that actual-visceral motivation isn’t sufficient for an untrained person to sustain attention to the breath for a long amount of time, even if it is (roughly) necessary—or at least very helpful/useful.
Finally—you ask why I am attempting to do such an unusual thing. For me, meditation is connected to wellbeing, the amount of conscious awareness I can bring to my everyday life. I notice when I skip meditation, similarly to how I notice when I mess up my sleep or skip workouts. These factors lead to me treating it as important—in the “wanting to want” sense. Turning that into an actual-visceral motivation is part of the challenge of meditation—it’s a practice arena for challenging mistaken beliefs about my wants and turning them into actual-visceral motivation.
It’s similar to my just-woken-up self after a period of poor sleep hygiene—my momentary “revealed preference” is to stay in bed, snoozing. Giving in to this preference perpetuates the poor sleep hygiene spiral—akin to addiction. When this happens, I have a “wanting to want” (stepping out of bed when I wake up) that I ideally are able to transform into an actual-visceral motivation, similar to the move that is useful in my meditation practice.
Thanks for taking the time to thoughtfully engage, I appreciate it.
2) If I manage to create a strong object-level want, I will boost my attention without needing to coerce myself
[...]
I was more curious about how the difference between a third-person and a first-person perspective affects my meditation.
This is what I’m talking about. Defaulting to the third person perspective and forgetting about the first person perspective causes a lot of trouble. It’s not just “here’s an unrelated hack for making it easier to do meditation”, it’s that it completely changes your meditation.
You notice that your third person “I should focus on the breath” is missing the point, and redirect to the first person perspective of “Sensations of breath are arising”, but in doing so you no longer even have a claim to the relevance of the breath. So now you have an experience of attending to sensation of breath for no reason, because of fairly handwavy third person reasons.
I’m pointing out that you can use meditation as practice for bringing more conscious awareness to your everyday life by bringing more conscious awareness to your practice of meditation itself. It’s a very different experience when you know in first person why what you’re attending to is the most interesting thing at the moment, and in third person knowing that you’re right to think this is what’s worth attending to.
That doesn’t mean you “give in” to first person perspectives and give up awareness of your third person perspective, just that you don’t give in to third person ideas either and give up or attempt to disconnect your first person perspective. It’s practicing being aware of both, and noticing when your behaviors don’t make sense according to your own perspectives.
Makes sense, I’ll see if I manage to get there in time.
Seems like your approach is cohering across perspectives while including more aspects into conscious awareness. Seems more likely to lead to integration/wholeness instead of dissociation/lost purposes.
edit: I’m also curious about your background/experience of meditation, if you are open to sharing.
What I would say is that untrained people don’t sustain focus on their breath for extended amounts of time. When you introduce the word “can” you’re claiming more than just what is observed and making claims about what they would do in other counterfactuals too. If we’re careful with those counterfactual choices, I think the claim that they “can’t” turns out to be false.
The difference between “trying to try” and “trying on the object level” can be the difference between struggling for months and succeeding in seconds.
Something like that, yeah.
Like, you might want to go get Chinese food but not spend your money. Your desires for Chinese food and money are tugging you in different directions rather than in one coherent direction. But it’s possible to make up your mind and coherently want to pay for the Chinese food or else not want to eat it. You have to recognize that you can’t have the food without paying the money, and figure out which of your new options you prefer.
Do this enough, and you become relatively more coherent.
I’ll answer to both your replies here. Sorry about any confusion that the deletion of my first reply caused.
It seems like your argument is roughly:
1) There’s a difference between “wanting to want” and “object-level wanting”
2) If I manage to create a strong object-level want, I will boost my attention without needing to coerce myself
With some extra ideas:
* Having mistaken beliefs about what you want—ones not connected to revealed preference—is harmful, since it leads to self-delusion and stuckness.
* Actually-viscerally-motivated people can sustain attention to a meditation object, even without much training
If my understanding is correct, then we are largely in agreement. You are highlighting coercive tendencies in my post, and I do believe that there’s great value in anchoring my wants in something visceral. My usage of “should” might point to an inner conflict that’s useful to resolve, and I will look into this.
However, this wasn’t the key thing I wanted to focus on in the post—I was more curious about how the difference between a third-person and a first-person perspective affects my meditation.
I’m also convinced that actual-visceral motivation isn’t sufficient for an untrained person to sustain attention to the breath for a long amount of time, even if it is (roughly) necessary—or at least very helpful/useful.
Finally—you ask why I am attempting to do such an unusual thing. For me, meditation is connected to wellbeing, the amount of conscious awareness I can bring to my everyday life. I notice when I skip meditation, similarly to how I notice when I mess up my sleep or skip workouts. These factors lead to me treating it as important—in the “wanting to want” sense. Turning that into an actual-visceral motivation is part of the challenge of meditation—it’s a practice arena for challenging mistaken beliefs about my wants and turning them into actual-visceral motivation.
It’s similar to my just-woken-up self after a period of poor sleep hygiene—my momentary “revealed preference” is to stay in bed, snoozing. Giving in to this preference perpetuates the poor sleep hygiene spiral—akin to addiction. When this happens, I have a “wanting to want” (stepping out of bed when I wake up) that I ideally are able to transform into an actual-visceral motivation, similar to the move that is useful in my meditation practice.
Thanks for taking the time to thoughtfully engage, I appreciate it.
This is what I’m talking about. Defaulting to the third person perspective and forgetting about the first person perspective causes a lot of trouble. It’s not just “here’s an unrelated hack for making it easier to do meditation”, it’s that it completely changes your meditation.
You notice that your third person “I should focus on the breath” is missing the point, and redirect to the first person perspective of “Sensations of breath are arising”, but in doing so you no longer even have a claim to the relevance of the breath. So now you have an experience of attending to sensation of breath for no reason, because of fairly handwavy third person reasons.
I’m pointing out that you can use meditation as practice for bringing more conscious awareness to your everyday life by bringing more conscious awareness to your practice of meditation itself. It’s a very different experience when you know in first person why what you’re attending to is the most interesting thing at the moment, and in third person knowing that you’re right to think this is what’s worth attending to.
That doesn’t mean you “give in” to first person perspectives and give up awareness of your third person perspective, just that you don’t give in to third person ideas either and give up or attempt to disconnect your first person perspective. It’s practicing being aware of both, and noticing when your behaviors don’t make sense according to your own perspectives.
Makes sense, I’ll see if I manage to get there in time.
Seems like your approach is cohering across perspectives while including more aspects into conscious awareness. Seems more likely to lead to integration/wholeness instead of dissociation/lost purposes.
edit: I’m also curious about your background/experience of meditation, if you are open to sharing.