John Horgan has some observations on meditation.
Journalist Robert Wright, an old friend who has recently gotten into meditation, wrote in The Atlantic in 2013 that more experienced meditators “seem much less emotion-driven, much less wrapped up in themselves, and much less judgmental than, say, I am.” He suggests that if more of us meditated, we might get along better.
I have two words to say to that. Sam Harris.
I rest my case.
I suspect that meditation is as morally neutral as reading or jogging. If you meditate to become nicer—perhaps by thinking “Be nice” rather than “Be happy”–meditation might make you nicer. But meditation can make some people meaner, or rather, help them behave meanly without feeling bad about it.
So it’s a good way to reduce cognitive dissonance while still being a shit.
Some meditation teachers claim or strongly imply that they have achieved a state of profound, permanent bliss called enlightenment—also known as satori, samadhi, nirvana, liberation, awakening, cosmic consciousness. These teachers claim that they can help students become enlightened, too.
Anyone familiar with the alternative spirituality scene knows that some prominent teachers, or gurus, have behaved more like sociopaths than saints. They include Chogyam Trungpa, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Shoko Asahara, Da Free John and many more. Google them for details.
For my 2003 book Rational Mysticism, I interviewed men who claimed—or implied—that they had meditated their way to enlightenment. They struck me as being narcissistic rather than wise and saintly. See, for example, my profile of guru Andrew Cohen.
I think a lot of men confuse the two. (Women probably would too if they could, but all the sexist jokes make it impossible.) (I’m joking; relax.)
Matthieu Ricard trained as a biologist in France before becoming a Buddhist monk. He has been described as “the happiest man in the world,” after Richard Davidson reported that Ricard displayed high levels of neural activity associated with well-being. (Ricard, Davidson and Antoine Lutz co-authored the above-cited Scientific American article.)
Ricard is probably a great guy, but I’ve been down on him since reading science writer Stephen Hall’s 2010 book Wisdom. Hall admiringly describes Ricard coming from Nepal, where he “spent tens of thousands of hours training himself to be compassionate,” to New York, where he taught meditation to “financiers.”
First: Isn’t there something weirdly contradictory about meditating on compassion to achieve personal peace of mind? If you are truly compassionate, shouldn’t you spend more time actually helping others? Second: Financiers? Come on.
Well wait, maybe it’s worked. Maybe the financiers actually have become more compassionate.
*looks around*
No, of course you’re right; I don’t know what I was thinking.
Some meditators insist that their primary goal is neither niceness nor happiness but knowledge. Meditation supposedly helps you understand the nature of the self, mind, reality. Spiritual author Ken Wilber compares meditation to a microscope or telescope that helps you “see your Buddha nature.”
The problem is that different meditators “discover” different truths. Some find confirmation of their belief in God, the soul, reincarnation, extrasensory perception and other supernatural phenomena. Others find confirmation of their materialism and atheism.
So if I’m going to do that I’d rather just go for a walk.
I would love to read a
debatediscussion between you and Greta Christina on all this.So, if I’m remembering my Buddhism correctly, enlightenment is fleeting, and the process (i.e. meditation) is the important part, not the impermanent result. I call meta-bullshit: bullshit about other bullshit.
Funny enough, someone in the comments to Horgan’s article has already mentioned Sam Harris — in a positive sense.
The other comments are just as entertaining (as is the case with the other Horgan articles on Buddhism that are linked at the bottom): you didn’t get the claimed results from meditation? Then you must not have been doing it right! It’s a neatly unfalsifiable claim, just like all the Christians who insist that we’d be believers if only we’d really opened our hearts to Jesus.
Goody! Another “way of knowing.” Sit there silently, and actual information about the world just races to leap into your brain!
What is the mechanism by which one learns through meditation? And is it indistiguishable from “sitting and thinking”?
I can’t speak for everything that is called meditation. But what is commonly called “mindfulness meditation” has elements that are similar to the earlier parts of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Focusing on yourself as you are in the present would strengthen areas of the brain responsible for awareness of yourself (Insula) as a being and it is the body that forms the core of the emotions. You basically gain a better developed emotional “Heads Up Display”.
That being said there is no reason to think that a jerk with more awareness of how their state of jerkitude feels to themselves would be any nicer. Nor does it give reason to think that they will be any better with emotions and emotional connections that they are not accustomed to using all that often. Maybe it could make reasoning with them more efficient somehow.
Maybe…
I have two words to say to that. Sam Harris.
Funny thing is in waking up Harris sort of went along with that, citing examples like Osho (although his assessment of cult leaders was very shallow)
Suggests a slight lack of self-awareness there!
@6
“strengthen areas of the brain”
Do they become bulging piles of muscles from all that strengthening?
Hmm… I think I must just be doing it wrong.
I meditate, but I’ve never found myself reaching any states of bliss or happiness, and it never imbued me with an ability to be compassionate that I’d lacked before. It just… you know… sort of helps me sort through the messy jumble of my thoughts and occasionally recognise areas where I’m being intellectually sabotaged by kneejerk reactions. It doesn’t make me nicer or anything like that… I do like to think that I’m pretty nice, but if I am, it’s more because I try not to treat people like shit than because I sometimes sit and listen to myself think. To be honest with you, I’m actually kind of alarmed that people seem to think that you’d need to meditate in order to achieve that kind of thing, or that it would be effective in any way. Meditation is your own mind analysing your own mind. If you’re fundamentally convinced that kicking puppies is a good and moral thing to do, then meditating to become a better person won’t change that. You’ll still be an arsehole, just one who’s convinced that they’re not because they meditated about kindness.
I suspect that meditation is as morally neutral as reading or jogging. If you meditate to become nicer—perhaps by thinking “Be nice” rather than “Be happy”–meditation might make you nicer. But meditation can make some people meaner, or rather, help them behave meanly without feeling bad about it.
I think they key element that drives how a person interprets their experiences of meditation (morally anyway) is how elitist or egalitarian they are. An interesting case I George Monbiot’s book Feral in which he advocates ‘rewilding’ the restoring lost ecosystems and reconnecting with nature at an emotional level, and explicitly compares the latter with meditation. In one chapter however, Monbiot cautions that notions of rewilding have been used to justify fascism – some fascists have imagined themselves as ‘wild beings’ with a born right to subjugate ‘degenerate’ types who have become irrevocably domesticated. These same fascist are often attracted to eastern and neopagan religion; this exact same blend of ideas appeals to many on the liberal and libertarian left. By contrast, environmentalism, rewilding and meditation have little appeal to the Marxist and social democratic left, or to the conservative and libertarian right.
When immersed in nature or in the depths of meditation one experiences a cessation of the normal buzz of thought and a deep sense of peace. How one reacts to this experience varies. To an egalitarian like Monbiot, such a sense of bliss might be taken as an experience to be shared with as many people as possible, whereas to an elitist like Harris the difficulty in achieving these experiences is evidence that they are to be seen esoteric secrets, to be revealed only to a chosen few who are considered worthy.
My husband meditates. He also reads about Budhism from an atheist perspective. There are several kinds of meditation, each with different goals. What my husband does is ‘concentration training’. It helps him deal with stress. He has modified the technique and as a result he has on several occasions emerged from a session of meditation with solutions to problems he was working on at the time, mostly work related.
There is a different form of meditation that is described as ‘morality training’, which is intended to enhance one’s empathy. My husband is interested to learn about that but so far hasn’t found satisfying materials.
Another kind of meditation is ‘insight training’ – this is usually described as meditation with the purpose of ‘breaking down the illusion of the self’. This is where the search for ‘enlightenment’ comes, ‘make me one with everything’ jokes etc. People on this path describe arriving at a stage of great euphoria, followed by a stage of severe despair, and eventually (if they survive the despair) a new balance. My husband has no interest in this kind of training.
BTW the narcissism and sociopathy of ‘enlightened’ gurus is a known pitfall that is described frequently, at least in the literature my husband reads. In part it is driven by the belief one has achieved something remarkable that few people even try, let alone succeed at and in part by being treated as someone special by admiring beginners (and of course by being of a narcissistic bend in the first place).
Re: Sam Harris: We don’t know what he would have been like *without* meditation, do we?
My husband meditates. He also reads about Budhism from an atheist perspective. There are several kinds of meditation, each with different goals. What my husband does is ‘concentration training’. It helps him deal with stress. He has modified the technique and as a result he has on several occasions emerged from a session of meditation with solutions to problems he was working on at the time, mostly work related.
I’m similar, I mostly practice breathing meditation these days, I used to practice Vipassana in the S.N. Goenka tradition, very rewarding but very demanding too! I can’t say I’ve come up with solutions to life’s problems while meditating, but I do tend to feel more motivated and at ease after a good meditate.
Re: Sam Harris: We don’t know what he would have been like *without* meditation, do we?
By his own account chronically afraid of public speaking! Make of that what you will.
@ModZero 9
I see the joke, but neuroplasticity can be thought of as “bulking up” literally when it creates thickening of brain regions, more integrated and stronger connections from new dendritic growth or unique connections from new learning (and future strengthening of those).
Note that I’m fully expecting “neuroplasticy” to become a woo buzzword akin to “quantum” in the near future if now already (in fact I would bet that it can be found now).
Cosmically, Kali Holloway at Alternet today addresses the very same question!
Mindfulness: Capitalism’s New Favorite Tool for Maintaining the Status Quo:
There’s a notion in some meditative traditions that the stench of enlightenment is not enlightenment.
It refers directly to these kinds of issues. There’s a tendency for people who pursue enlightenment to take on and become attached to an obnoxious piety. This actually winds up blocking them from what the focus of the meditation is supposed to be about.
Reminds me of a story I was once told of a Zen Roshi who overheard that one of the new students who came to learn had seen him in the hallway before class, and had assumed he was the janitor – it implied that he didn’t stink of enlightenment. 🙂
Me, I see meditation as introspection. Not my hobby.
Brony @15, no reference to synaptic pruning?
(Not to mention synaptic GIGO)
@John Morales
It would not have worked with the metaphor, but is a point worth making. Neuroplasticisty involves reductions as much as it does additions.
In my experience, and from what I can tell from other people’s tales, the basic steps required to attain a temporary state of enlightenment via Ko’an meditation are neutral. As long as you follow the ordained steps (pick a sentence, break it down to the core question through reflection and keep at it as you despair), you’ll reach a state of euphoric enlightement with some aural hallucinations that appear to illustrate the piece of dogma you´ve been reflecting on. The experience itself will still clearly be defined by whatever religion or philosophy you used as a framework in the first place though.
The technique is apparently not without merit for actual high level problem-solving – it seems that some mathematicians involuntarily went through the steps and attained insight into the concepts they required to compute the solution they were looking for – but in terms of religious practice, all it serves for is to bulk up the practicioner’s faith in the truthfulness of his religion’s dogma. Meaning at best it’d prime a buddhist monk for the actual hard part – the daily mindfulness.
Much like Presidency, the best mediators are those that have no interest in being a figurehead.