What I took away from this comment was: Mainstream meditation teachers are not happy with Martin because he has redefined “awakening” to mean a thing that is good and people want (being happier), rather than a thing that is strange and possibly bad that people don’t want, and is teaching people the good and wanted thing instead of the weird mysterious thing.
Not really. Martin’s “Locations” 2 and 3 are somewhat in line with traditional definitions of awakening, his course is, in fact, aiming at the weird esoteric stuff, not the low-hanging-fruit that techniques like MBSR are picking. It’s his “Location 1″ that is more contentious, where he seems to place the bar lower than other traditions. The course itself still seems net-positive to me, even if I disagree with charging money for the techniques. I just don’t want people to self-diagnose as being in “Location 1”, and think that they’re awakened by the more common definitions. Thinking you’re awakened when you’re not tends to hurt your practice more than the inverse.
As an aside, being happier is a relatively early fruit of the meditative path. You can learn to do something called The Second Jhana, where you basically generate happiness on demand. What happens after you get that is that you realize that happiness wasn’t actually what you were looking for, there is a more fundamental problem to be solved than just not being happy. Somewhat unintuitively, being happy isn’t enough to truly Satisfy, it works for a few months while the novelty hasn’t worn off, but it’s not the ultimate answer. For that you need the strange and scary esoteric stuff.
As an unenlightened person, why would I want satisfaction while living in a world that has things I want to change? I guess I’m asking if drives persist with perfect contentment, and if so, how?
Very good question, I’m not too sure why you got downvoted, this is a point very frequently discussed in meditation circles. It is true that at some batshit-insane high point of meditation prowess (that basically only the most extreme of monks get to), you have the option to literally just sit there, full of contentment, ignoring thirst, hunger and pain until you just die. Hermits that renounce the world do exist, and this is a pitfall of the meditative path that needs to be avoided, the good news is that knowing about the pitfall gets you 90% of the way to avoiding it.
There are examples of the exact opposite of a hermit, the highly accomplished meditators I know are extraordinarily productive, one guy in particular said that at some point he could just sit there programming for 16 consecutive hours without getting bored, getting tempted by distractions, or anything else, day after day after day. Shinzen Young is an advanced meditation teacher in his late 70s now, and he’s trying very hard to change the world (from the pov of his own values). I’m not advanced enough to actually understand how this works at the high levels, but from my own experience I notice that the drive to improve the world starts coming more from compassion for others, rather than from the desperation of seeking my own happiness. I know I have the ability to ultimately be content no matter what happens to the world, but I still know that changing the world would be good, and I still work towards that end.
In the end I don’t really have a good answer for you apart to say that the pitfall does exist, but that knowing about it gets you a long way to avoid it, and that there are lots of examples of advanced meditators who still work unbelievably hard to improve the world.
What I took away from this comment was: Mainstream meditation teachers are not happy with Martin because he has redefined “awakening” to mean a thing that is good and people want (being happier), rather than a thing that is strange and possibly bad that people don’t want, and is teaching people the good and wanted thing instead of the weird mysterious thing.
Not really. Martin’s “Locations” 2 and 3 are somewhat in line with traditional definitions of awakening, his course is, in fact, aiming at the weird esoteric stuff, not the low-hanging-fruit that techniques like MBSR are picking. It’s his “Location 1″ that is more contentious, where he seems to place the bar lower than other traditions. The course itself still seems net-positive to me, even if I disagree with charging money for the techniques. I just don’t want people to self-diagnose as being in “Location 1”, and think that they’re awakened by the more common definitions. Thinking you’re awakened when you’re not tends to hurt your practice more than the inverse.
As an aside, being happier is a relatively early fruit of the meditative path. You can learn to do something called The Second Jhana, where you basically generate happiness on demand. What happens after you get that is that you realize that happiness wasn’t actually what you were looking for, there is a more fundamental problem to be solved than just not being happy. Somewhat unintuitively, being happy isn’t enough to truly Satisfy, it works for a few months while the novelty hasn’t worn off, but it’s not the ultimate answer. For that you need the strange and scary esoteric stuff.
As an unenlightened person, why would I want satisfaction while living in a world that has things I want to change? I guess I’m asking if drives persist with perfect contentment, and if so, how?
Very good question, I’m not too sure why you got downvoted, this is a point very frequently discussed in meditation circles. It is true that at some batshit-insane high point of meditation prowess (that basically only the most extreme of monks get to), you have the option to literally just sit there, full of contentment, ignoring thirst, hunger and pain until you just die. Hermits that renounce the world do exist, and this is a pitfall of the meditative path that needs to be avoided, the good news is that knowing about the pitfall gets you 90% of the way to avoiding it.
There are examples of the exact opposite of a hermit, the highly accomplished meditators I know are extraordinarily productive, one guy in particular said that at some point he could just sit there programming for 16 consecutive hours without getting bored, getting tempted by distractions, or anything else, day after day after day. Shinzen Young is an advanced meditation teacher in his late 70s now, and he’s trying very hard to change the world (from the pov of his own values). I’m not advanced enough to actually understand how this works at the high levels, but from my own experience I notice that the drive to improve the world starts coming more from compassion for others, rather than from the desperation of seeking my own happiness. I know I have the ability to ultimately be content no matter what happens to the world, but I still know that changing the world would be good, and I still work towards that end.
In the end I don’t really have a good answer for you apart to say that the pitfall does exist, but that knowing about it gets you a long way to avoid it, and that there are lots of examples of advanced meditators who still work unbelievably hard to improve the world.