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Medidation, Enlightenment, Dharma, and Sokushinbutsu

anon_dozu said in #3523 7d ago: received

>>3508
>>3506
>>3455
I see we have some enlightenment-seeking buddhist types lurking around. I have a question for them: what is it you think is valuable about these "enlightened" mental states reachable with meditation etc? I hear about them occasionally but by the self-admission of those who pursue them, the result seems to be of little practical value, and ends up just alienating the seeker from everything they used to value.

The only buddhist meditation memes I've seen make fun of this. Wojack starts out as a naive self-improover thinking meditation will make him more emotionally stable and successful, and becomes some kind of amoral monster of the will with no recognizeably human emotions at all. On this grounds he both advises against enlightenment, and advises for it.

As much as I admire the idea of reaching elevated states of cognitive purity and the monstrous will to do things like commit sokushinbutsu (meditation to the point of self-mummification, practiced by hardcore japanese monks), I can't shake the impression that this is all an elaborate form of wireheading or mental masturbation.

Sociologically, I notice a lot of similarities between medidation-based enlightenment culture and psychedelic culture. Both have dubious claims on objective practicality, but stake their arguments on the purely subjective value of some profound state of mind. From the outside, this is indistinguishable from blowing holes in your brain with megadoses of research chemicals to the point of not being able to distinguish profound from inane anymore. I know a lot more guys who went insane and insist on the profundity of this insanity than guys who turned into Steve Jobs.

But I'll let you speak for yourselves. What are we enlightenment non-believers missing?

referenced by: >>3575

I see we have some e received

anon_hwmi said in #3558 6d ago: received

I think the main problem here is that people like to over-mysticize "enlightenment" and have vastly different things in their heads when they say this, especially amongst "believers."

The core beliefs (or Four Noble Truths if you will) come down to the fact that there is an undercurrent of stress in minds (1) which is being constantly created by an active process (2), which can cease (3) if you follow a certain set of practices (4). These are purely descriptive statements about minds, that should you falsify would indeed negate any reason to follow the set of practices the Buddha laid out.

So enlightenment is just the cessation of the stress that you are constantly creating for yourself by clinging. That is it. If this doesn't seem true to you, or you think that it would be better to go for some other goal in your life instead, you can do that. All you miss out on is being able to engage with life with an unrivaled satisfaction that will stick with you forever.

I phrase it that way because I believe that is actually what you give up. I'm not trying to cast other goals as bad. I constantly have other goals, and pursue them, but I know it is irrational when I believe this much better goal is there, so I don't begrudge anyone else. I don't expect others to have read hundreds of suttas and listened to hundreds of dhamma talks just because they thought it was interesting, which is what it took me to be convinced.

The other key part is one which probably requires more faith than what I laid out above. The idea is that not only is this lack of suffering good, it is unconditioned and deathless. Meaning not only will it last your lifetime, it will last forever. I could dive into Buddhist cosmology and exactly how they view causality, and then the implications of that on the goal, but if you are skeptical it is probably not worth it. Though I would factor in this belief if you read accounts of actual arahants (people who have achieved this state of the total cessation of stress) to understand what they are trying to communicate.

What was the Buddha even setting out to do before he became "enlightened?" Here is one of the longest suttas that gives the Buddha's account of what he was trying to do and how he did it: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN36.html

If you read this or the other suttas about his life, you see he began to notice that everyone is subject to aging, illness, and death so pursuing a satisfaction (or happiness in a more common frame) in something that is subject to these aspects will ultimately end as well. Many would say this is a nihilistic view, but really it was profoundly optimistic! Who would dare suggest that there is a goal, whose achievement is unconditioned and end is more satisfying than any conditioned satisfaction? He didn't know he would actually find it, he just believed that he could.

Anyway, hopefully this captures some fraction of the set of beliefs one who is compelled by this goal and this path has. I would encourage anyone who is interested to check out the site I linked above (https://www.dhammatalks.org) and maybe listen to some of the talks on there that sound interesting. If nothing else, it can be relaxing.

If people still are skeptical, or think I am misrepresenting anything, please respond. I would like to be able to make this argument better because it would probably help a lot of people to make these ideas even more accessible.

referenced by: >>3559 >>3575

I think the main pro received

anon_dozu said in #3559 5d ago: received

>>3558
Excellent reply and description of the idea in any case. You have not convinced me that this satisfaction is worthwhile but it is plausible to me that it exists, and that many would find it worthwhile.

I would be curious to hear another attempt to actually motivate it against the wireheading charge. For example, if the stress really is a disharmony resulting from lack of skill or clarity, then resolving it would be expected to make you more effective in visible ways (modulo opportunity cost), whereas if it is more like brain damage or wireheading you would expect more addiction-like results.

I would also like to hear more about risks or unforseen changes to the self. I have heard some of this from people saying that meditation is not the safe “wellness” practice that some try to present it as. This isnt necessarily to be counted against it. Philosophy is likewise a dangerous thing to get into, especially if you are just a normie wanting practical results.

referenced by: >>3567 >>3575 >>3576

Excellent reply and received

anon_moca said in #3565 5d ago: received

You'll get more biological effects out of diet and energy maximization. There was something I did a while ago that made me feel surreal, like what original man is supposed to be. I felt no emotion anymore and only the drive to productive activity.

American bread makes me feel weak and gay.

Mental tricks help for stress reduction.

It's all energy. Ray Peat solved it already. Not sure why people aren't able to understand him or only surface-level skim.

You'll get more biol received

anon_hwmi said in #3567 5d ago: received

>>3559
There is a phrase in the Pali Canon that is used frequently that goes something like "the Buddha teaches a Dhamma that is good in its beginning, good in its middle, and good in its end" and this is exactly why you might want to leverage the ideas even when pursuing other goals.

We can look at what the "path" actually constitutes:
1. Right view: you actually believe the four noble truths accurately describe reality, or at least you believe it instrumentally if not wholeheartedly. This one is useful for the path but probably not much else.
2. Right resolve: while holding the above belief is good, it isn't enough. You must also resolve to act more skillfully. This means looking at your own thoughts and actions and see which are beneficial to you in the long run and trying to do those more, and looking at what is actually hurting you long term and doing this less. This is basic introspection required to get more skilled at anything, obviously transferrable to any goal.
3. Right speech: only saying what is true, timely, and beneficial. Again, if you are conditioned to telling lies or speaking harshly to others, you are most likely doing the same when speaking to yourself. You may believe you can separate the two, but I believe there is a reason most Aryan cultures held the truth so highly.
4. Right action: no killing, stealing, fighting, or sexual misconduct. In pursuing most any worthwhile goal, these will either directly hurt you if you get caught, or they will indirectly hurt your ability to face yourself when you look back on your life to attempt to improve yourself. You will learn to shy away from introspection and thus hide from reality. This is important because it is much closer to virtue ethics because it is much more about not taking action that you will shy away from than it is about some divine punishment. Again useful for other goals.
5. Right livelihood: like the above think about this with respect to virtue ethics. A means of supporting yourself is bad if it turns you into a lower kind of man, and good if it is honest and you can face reality more clearly. If you must contort how you interpret reality in order to face your job each day, you are just cultivating delusion and will probably not be effective in most higher pursuits anyway.
6. Right effort: you generate the desire to do the actions that get you to your goal. This one is necessary for any long term ambitious goal. If you don't have desire to end suffering forever, you will likely never reach it. This is contrary to people who say you must give up all desire, which is dumb. Desire is strong, and the Buddha advocates directing yours to a good goal. Maybe in the end you drop it, but you don't throw away your raft before you finish crossing the river.
7. Right mindfulness: literally the ability to hold a thought in your head and remember it consistently when doing other things in your life. For the Buddha's goal, it should be the four noble truths. For another worthy goal, it should be whatever is needed to believe in order to achieve it.
8. Right concentration: this is the only step on the path that is specific to the Buddha's goal. Concentration is a single minded focus on one object that takes you into ever more refined and enjoyable mental states called jhanas. The idea is to cultivate the skill of getting your mind into these states because it is a pleasure that does not depend on any outside factors and doesn't harm anyone else in its pursuit. The Buddha uses it so that you can more confidently drop the desire for other things that are hurting yourself or others in your pursuit of them. Could be useful for other goals, but the case would have to be made.

So to me it seems like 6/8 of the steps of the Buddha's path will be instrumentally useful for any other goal as well. It also doesn't require you to risk "wireheading" yourself with practices to cultivate different mental states. Instead it just aligns your thoughts and actions in a way that allow you to more fully direct yourself towards a noble goal.

referenced by: >>3575 >>3627

There is a phrase in received

phaedrus said in #3575 5d ago: received

>>3558
>>3567
I couldn't agree more! Excellent description of some of the cognitive science of the path, and bonus points for bringing up MN 36, what a great sutta.

>>3523
>>3559
To anon_dozu, I think the lack of desire for/interest in "awakening" is a symptom of self-misunderstanding. The dissatisfaction and stress that the Buddhists call "dukkha" is a fundamental feature of human experience, so the "baseline" of any human agent includes a huge amount of dukkha. Of course, given that this is just taken to be a necessary part of human experience, no one is able to evaluate the pros or cons of the presence of dukkha. I think the best approximation is imagining simply the internal experience of being in a flow state, which has much less of the experience of dukkha than everyday consciousness. So, would you like to live your life with the same amount of ease and well-being as a perfect flow state, with all the mental clarity and the versatility that comes with normal non-flow consciousness? Of course, if you ask fully awakened people about their everyday experience, they say it's orders of magnitude better even than perfect flow consciousness, but it's not easy to evaluate one way or another.

On the wireheading charge, this is definitely the kind of question that is relevant for someone considering awakening! Personally, as awakening is more about a removal of cognitive impulses that lead away from being in the moment, and a lot of the pleasure and positive reward of awakening comes from this kind of inner peace and sensory clarity, I don't think the negative connotations of wireheading need to apply here. There are states, the jhānas, that are more like straightforward wireheading, but even those have a weird relationship with the dopamine reward system that makes them non-habit reinforcing, so it's essentially impossible to get addicted. I'd still say someone who spends all of their life in the jhānas is doing something wrong along the lines of wireheading, but being awakened allows one to live one's entire life much the same way as before while experiencing an incredibly high hedonic baseline.

>For example, if the stress really is a disharmony resulting from lack of skill or clarity, then resolving it would be expected to make you more effective in visible ways (modulo opportunity cost), whereas if it is more like brain damage or wireheading you would expect more addiction-like results.
Generally, enlightened people are effective in their endeavors, but it also greatly reduces the reward signal from status-seeking and ego-defense activity. So there's much less drive to do big flashy projects that would fall in the more LinkedIn-friendly success category. But on the whole, it does seem like enlightenment is less of a productivity hack than it might appear, and is much more of an internal states hack. It certainly doesn't seem to increase people's IQ or anything, even though it might remove certain psychological patterns that interfere with the production of intellectual work.

referenced by: >>3627

I couldn't agree mor received

phaedrus said in #3576 5d ago: received

>>3559
>I would also like to hear more about risks or unforseen changes to the self. I have heard some of this from people saying that meditation is not the safe “wellness” practice that some try to present it as. This isnt necessarily to be counted against it. Philosophy is likewise a dangerous thing to get into, especially if you are just a normie wanting practical results.

This is totally true, and should be expected with any kind of cognitive procedure that really does interfere with fundamental neural machinery.

There are a few things that come along 100% inevitably as one progresses along the Buddhist path, including the elimination of the subjective sense of being a self and the illusion of free will. Pretty much universally, people experience these as incredibly rewarding, worthwhile, and meaningful experiences, although they can be disorienting. There are also the rare and more straightforwardly negative effects like psychosis, instability, just generally weird addictive behaviors, and all sorts of strange energetic and psychological phenomena. In general, it seems like these are either the result of doing extreme practices that are super psychologically taxing, like the Tibetan thing of doing 100,000 prostrations, or extremely intense periods of isolation or physical endurance.

There's also a lot of methods that aim to accomplish the cognitive science changes in an extremely fast manner by getting into the discrete machinery that constructs experience via synchronizing brainwaves. This is called the Mahasi Sayadaw method and comes predominantly from Burma, and does indeed seem to be very effective at quickly getting the job done. However, it has an incredibly outsized proportion of the incidence of psychosis or psychological trauma, which really appears to be the result of psychological structures and the rest of the brain in general not having time to cope with and integrate the fundamental phenomenological and cognitive shifts. So, if you're doing Mahasi-style noting, then you should really be prepared for a wild ride. However, if you do one of the more wireheading-adjacent routes that focuses on what the Buddha calls samādhi, or cognitive unification, then generally you avoid most of the bad side effects at the cost of going slightly slower through the cognitive shifts.

Also, there's always the risk when undertaking any kind of Buddhist practice. You interfere with your normal life, career, relationships, etc., if the underlying psychological structure supporting your life is some kind of trauma response, ego defense, or status-seeking behavior. This is, of course, incredibly common, and it's a basic philosophical insight that individual vice and desire for acquisition, etc., can be extremely pro-social in the aggregate. All that said, if those psychological structures start to fall apart as you're dissolving your sense of self, then you might find it hard to resume work at your investment banking job. This is generally more than compensated for by the 10x improvement in hedonic baseline, but it's still something to be cognizant of.

referenced by: >>3627

This is totally true received

anon_zadw said in #3625 3d ago: received

OP gave you lot a real, honest shot to proselytize, and I remain as unconvinced as I was before I read the thread. Buddhists of the rat and post-rat variety always seem to present as these carriers of a deep gnosis, but then as soon as you really get them talking they betray the truth of their aim, straightforward normie muhligion.

They also say things like:
>There are states, the jhānas, that are more like straightforward wireheading, but even those have a weird relationship with the dopamine reward system that makes them non-habit reinforcing, so it's essentially impossible to get addicted.
Which reads the same as your friend who loves cigarettes trying to get you to smoke one. "It has a weird relationship with the dopamine system bro, I swear to GOd it's impossible to get addicted bro."

The deeper issue is that Buddhism is denial of self, it is an ego death cult:
>Generally, enlightened people are effective in their endeavors, but it also greatly reduces the reward signal from status-seeking and ego-defense activity. So there's much less drive to do big flashy projects that would fall in the more LinkedIn-friendly success category.
Thanks man, but I, uh, prefer to trust Western Civilization, the kleos of the Hellenes, the resounding "I AM" of American exceptionalism since the days of John Winthrop, the general celebration and furtherance of self in combat against other selves.

I do grant that this chant is extremely powerful. So you've got that going for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swR5K2GN1G4

OP gave you lot a re received

anon_dozu said in #3627 3d ago: received

>>3567
Excellent. But that last point about pursuit of the jhanas I still still find unmotivated.

>>3575
>Of course, if you ask fully awakened people about their everyday experience, they say it's orders of magnitude better even than perfect flow consciousness, but it's not easy to evaluate one way or another.
>being awakened allows one to live one's entire life much the same way as before while experiencing an incredibly high hedonic baseline.
I may even believe them, but my rather unamerican and uncalifornian perspective is what is the purpose of better hedonic experience? Why on reflection should I care about the magnitude of the reward signal? If there is some practical problem this "dukkha" indicates, the way pain typically denotes damage, I would be very interested, but I have not yet heard it. There is a path to walk towards infinite bliss, and if I were interested in such things I would walk it. But as it is I am a student of teleological philosophy, not hedonism, so I ask that things account for themselves within a framework of purpose, not subjective valence.

I remain open to the idea that there is a practical purpose to all this, but that meditation enjoyers consistently direct the attention away from external purpose to internal state-of-mind concerns I count as significant. Is it the case as it seems that walking this path makes you value subjective hedonic bliss above worldly concerns?

>Generally, enlightened people are effective in their endeavors
So are many.

>it also greatly reduces the reward signal from status-seeking and ego-defense activity. So there's much less drive to do big flashy projects
>>3576
>You interfere with your normal life, career, relationships, etc., if the underlying psychological structure supporting your life is some kind of trauma response, ego defense, or status-seeking behavior.
Eternal fame is to the glory of the gods, and the universe is a machine for producing glorious deeds.

I suppose the discussion we are really having here is a referendum on the ego, the self, etc. I come at this again from the perspective of teleology. The value of the glory of the self (caricatured here as mere status or psychological delusion as if achilles would have obsessed over a good linkedin page) derives from the value of is purpose and its effectiveness in accomplishing that purpose. The purpose of the self, as we have discussed in previous threads, is to organize the activity of life within an auto-anabolic closed loop. Life overall is not capable of such anabolic self-organization, so it fragments into many selves, who in pursuing their own success push forward the collective success of life. Thus the success of the self, where it does not actively hinder some other more important self, is a virtuous and purposeful thing. This is why I, a pure soul from the golden land, choose to descend to earth to become concerned with the small glories of a self. It is this argument, and not caricatures of psychological immaturity, that opponents of the self have to answer.

And as for the more abstract sorts of "ego defense" like eternal fame, what can the purpose of the whole project of life be if not to flower forth with glorious deeds which command respect and study from even the perspective of the gods? Of course other people have other accounting of the value of life, but I'll note they all support each other and they all require affirmation of this wonderful process and its fruits. It seems our blond prince Gautama forgot this wisdom of his ancestors, or his students forgot it.

>it's a basic philosophical insight that individual vice and desire for acquisition, etc., can be extremely pro-social in the aggregate
From whose perspective are these things vice? Christians and Buddhists who value the "other" world and wish to give up on this one? If it is a vice on account of its contamination by this world, why do we care for its worldly consequences? Go back to the other world then (kys). As I argue above, a well-ordered self interest is the highest of virtues, actually.

referenced by: >>3667

Excellent. But that received

anon_hwhw said in #3632 3d ago: received

I see meditation as just a way to increase my well-being, be happier, and more satisfied. Personally, feeling bad objectively feels bad. Feeling good objectively feels good. I'd like to feel good more.

People who don't value their well-being as the most important thing seem to (1) either not have a sense of what's possible in terms of increased happiness/well-being or (2) aren't very reflective about or sensitive to their phenomenology.

1. I think psychedelics often give people a sense of what's possible in terms of increasing their well-being.
2. I think usually it takes a big life event like a break up or a death for people to be reflective of their phenomenology.

Seems to be an intervention that takes quite a bit of time for some people, so some people spend lots of time doing it.

Some particularly thoughtful people I'm aware of who have written about meditation online in depth:
- https://www.reddit.com/user/DeliciousMixture-4-8/
- https://shargrolpostscompilation.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
- https://www.reddit.com/user/adivader/comments/o8skgp/vipassana_the_awakening_project_part_1_dus/

I see meditation as received

anon_cifi said in #3636 3d ago: received

Freedom! Suffering obstructs freedom.

It's not all or nothing either, you can engage the path to the point where the amount of freedom you have is sufficient for the life you want to lead.

There's also the side effect of enriching life, if you approach practice with compassion.

Freedom! Suffering o received

anon_hwmi said in #3667 2d ago: received

>>3627
> Eternal fame is to the glory of the gods, and the universe is a machine for producing glorious deeds.
This may come down to our own hearts in some ways, as it seems perfectly clear to me that the gods would undoubtedly recognize the cessation of suffering as true self mastery and glorious perfection of a mind. So this pursuit is glorious to you, but then also glorious to those that see you in this state of your own creation.

Would you look down upon Archimedes for a wholehearted pursuit of intellectual satisfaction to the neglect of anything else because he didn't achieve martial greatness? Was the Buddha truly less glorious to the gods than Achilles? He certainly has done a better job of creating a timeless unbroken tradition based on fundamental human truths.

referenced by: >>3669

This may come down t received

anon_dozu said in #3669 2d ago: received

>>3667
In justifying yourself in terms of the beauty of the accomplishment itself and not your own short-circuited subjective assessment of it, you are one step closer to enlightenment. Let's go a step further: Archimedes and Buddha did not win eternal fame for having achieved self-satisfaction, but for having given birth to new forms of cognition that have since become the operating systems of civilizations. You do not share in their glory by imitating their minor tricks of cognitive organization for their own sake, but by doing something real with them.

In justifying yourse received

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