Meditation and Mindfulness

People often describe mindfulness as "paying attention to whatever is happening in the now".



I think that this is a good example of how describing things from one's own experience, and then encoding them in religion, can lead to unfortunate results. (On the other hand, if you would like to preserve some "knowledge" that you deem worthy at ca 500 BC, man, what'cha gonna do?)

After all, when you're completely absorbed in your "monkey mind", then that's what you experience here and now, isn't it?

Just a few scattered remarks:

1) Mindfulness does feel like "paying attention to the here and now" to me - kinda/sorta.

2) Meditation is not the same as mindfulness. When we define mindfulness as above, then meditation might be the training ground. We practice a very specific (and deceptively simple) type of focus. This leads you away from identifying with your thoughts all the time, from being driven by that hodgepodge of melodramatic and emotional self-talk that (yes! from my experience, definitely yes!) we all engage in all the time. It makes sense to think that this leads you to a calmer mind (many people attest to that), which in turn might enable you to see things more like they really are (many people think that this is the case)... but is that necessarily true? Ugh. I don't know.

3) It is certainly true that whatever I experience now, including every thought, is precisely the "here and now", so why go look for it elsewhere? (There are people who think that liberation lies in realizing precisely this... look up "advaita vedanta" and nondualism.) But there is also the strange fact that we can look at our own thoughts from the outside, which is, in a way, what we do in meditation. So, maybe, we just build up an alternative way to look at ourselves, which might be practical or not, but probably can't hurt as long as you don't obsess over it.

4) Obsessing over it, ascribing way too much to it is one big mistake that is made all to often in "spiritual" flowery-powery newey-agey circles. And in buddhist circles, I guess. Some people do think that there is super-power in enlightenment.

5) Many people get into meditation by way of religion, often buddhist or hindu. Even without it, there are often "spiritual" overtones. So people go into it with certain expectations, and what they get out, unsurprisingly, tends to coincide with those. (Rare is the buddhist who got converted to Islam by her daily meditations. Not that they don't exist, I'm sure there are a few...)

6) "Seeing things for what they really are" can have a very specific meaning in buddhism which does not necessarily have a lot to do with "being in the here and now".

7) I do know that I am way less anxious, way more focused if I meditate regularly. I think I'm friendlier, and I definitely engage in fewer online fights. It is easier to eat good healthy food now, and I do my daily workout with joy instead of resistance. So, yeeey. (Could be shared cause instead of direct causation, of course.) I cannot deny that I sometimes think about "enlightenment", I do sooo like to dabble in half-buddhist thought, and sure would like to attain "it" - but I'm reasonably certain that that is bullshit, the brain does not allow for it, and one should give up on nirvana or anything of that kind.

8) I reject reincarnation, karma, and all that junk.

9) My favourite expression for my own goal wrt meditation is: I want to stop falling for my own bullshit. I have the impression that it does actually work.

10) If you want to try it, try it. If you don't, don't. If you try it, and it works, keep it. If you try it, and it doesn't work, then stop trying it and look for something else.

11) Enlightenment is shit on a stick.