Awakening

[-]SorenJ2y*25-4

The books you mention, The Mind Illuminated (TMI), and Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (MCTB), are quite popular among Western atheists, secular people, rationalists, and technically-minded intelligent individuals who spend a lot of time reading on the internet. I don't mean that pejoratively -- I count myself among these groups. However, if you have read these books, there is still much more to learn (and unlearn).

They are appealing because they promise to offer Buddhist meditation, insights, and strategies while jettisoning what they consider unnecessary religious scaffolding. Unfortunately, perhaps because of this, they contain numerous errors and often miseducate their readers about meditation and Buddhism in general. For example, Scott Alexander reviewed MCTB positively, saying it made him finally "get" Buddhism. This highlights an understandable bias: monks in robes teaching Buddhism, who accept religious and supernatural elements, are dismissed as religious men. On the other hand, figures like Daniel Ingram (author of MCTB) and John Yates, a neuroscientist and author of TMI, are seen as offering something more accessible to the secular mindset. There i... (read more)

[-]Kaj_Sotala1y212

I've now read about one-third of "In the Words of the Buddha". I personally appreciated getting the additional sociological and historical background so I'm happy that you recommended it and that I got it. However, its talk about reincarnation and realms of divine beings and so on doesn't really do much to convince me differently about this:

monks in robes teaching Buddhism, who accept religious and supernatural elements, are dismissed as religious men.

I think the book is, if anything, dissuading me from the idea that modern Western practitioners would benefit from spending time familiarizing themselves with the Pali Canon. (Assuming that they don't have, like me, an interest in its history for its own sake.)

I had previously been somewhat influenced by some of the Western apologetics and meditation teachers who said things like "no, Buddhism is really a philosophy rather than a religion, you can read it secularly and interpret all the stuff about rebirth etc. metaphorically". Whereas the impression I get from the book is that it really is a religion complete with all the supernaturalness and superstition, and that even the more secular parts like the moral advice contain bits we... (read more)

[-]SorenJ1y154

I agree with a lot of what you have said, and I am largely on board with the thrust of your message. The later parts of the book discuss some of the things more relevant to what we have been talking about, like meditation and "awakening," and these are also the more interesting bits, in my opinion. It also shouldn't be surprising that the Pali Canon contains 2,500 year old texts that we find odd! -- but if you enjoy history/mythology/sociology then it can be quite interesting.

I think what is missing is that a proper takeaway, for you, should be to update from the secular models as well. You say that the creators of these models have more reliable epistemics, but I do not like the comparison: the creators of the secular models have poor epistemics. As you put it:

"the impression I get from the book is that it really is a religion complete with all the supernaturalness and superstition ... I now think the people saying that you can really just read the stuff metaphorically are cherry-picking the bits that happen to fit the framework they're in favor of."

and I completely agree with this! But this makes me trust the modern authors less, not more. "Religious Buddhism" may be too hard to ... (read more)

7Kaj_Sotala1y

Ah. Yeah, I agree with your point that if someone is claiming that the secular interpretation of Buddhism is The True Interpretation and you can see that even in the original sources, that's a reason to be doubtful of them. They are, as you say, laundering their own ideas with the reputation of Buddhism. I think the difference is that I don't think I ever put sources like MCTB in the category of writers who make claims about the original meaning of the suttas. Though it's certainly possible that those claims were there and I just glossed over them. (And okay, admittedly the whole name of the book is reasonable to read as making a claim about what the original meaning of the teachings was.) But I read you to be saying something like "treat these modern secular writers as people who might be drawing inspiration from some Buddhist sources but are fundamentally doing their own new thing", and I think that I was already reading many of them as doing exactly that. With regard to MCTB specifically, this felt especially clear with Ingram including a chapter trashing the whole traditional Theravada conception of enlightenment and then following it up with a chapter presenting his own revised model as a replacement. That felt like him basically saying "yeah fuck those original religious guys, let's do something different, here's a model based on my own personal experience instead". Anyway I agree that it's good to point that out for anyone who missed that, or who interpreted books like MCTB differently.

8lsusr1y

After reading the parent comment by Mascal's Pugging, I too bought a copy of In the Words of the Buddha so I could familiarize myself with the Pali canon. I read 14% of the way through the book, got bored, and moved on to other things. Like Kaj Sotala, I found it interesting solely for anthropological and historical reasons. I did find it worthwhile to read part of the book, if for no other reason than to know what I'm not missing. Facets of Buddhism are undeniably religious. Last summer, I flew to Taiwan to attend the Buddhist funeral of my grandfather. We attached my grandfather's disembodied soul to a plaque and I carried it to its final resting place in a Buddhist temple. Whenever we crossed over running water, (even if it was a nearly-invisible canal) I verbally notified my grandfather's disembodied soul so that he wouldn't get washed away by the water. I did the same thing when passing through doorways. We gave him food for the afterlife, just like el Día de los Muertos. That's superstition. My only hesitation against calling it a "religion" is a pedantic nitpick around how the Western ontology of "religion" as a discrete unit was invented by monotheists; therefore "polytheistic religion" constitutes non-cladistic thinking. Except we chanted the Amida Buddha's name too, and Amida Buddhism qualifies as a religion even by that nitpicky standard. I feel the same way, noting that "more secular" does not mean "entirely secular". Last weekend, I wanted information about life after Stream Entry. I found a good book on the subject: The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment, by Adyashanti. The book is ruthlessly empirical, but it is also from the Zen tradition and quotes the Dao De Jing, which means it's not unadulturatedly secular, either. Meanwhile, the scientific journals are still trying to figure out for sure whether meditation reduces anxiety. Imagine writing a grant proposal for a large-scale double-blinded study of whet

4SorenJ1y

For what it is worth, the later parts of the book discuss the things you might be more intersted in, like meditative/path models. The scientific research is quite interesting, in particular, I find the brain scans of monks to be incredible.

7lsusr1y

Something I found amusing about reading the Bible is that the book is undeniably religious, but the religion in it isn't Christianity. God doesn't promise Abraham eternal life in Heaven. He promises inclusive genetic fitness.

3Said Achmiz4mo

Well, of course it’s not—it’s Judaism!

5lsusr2y

Great comment! TMI is important in my personal chronology because of how it got me into this stuff. I don't actually recommend it. There are other books I prefer to TMI. MCTB isn't core to my practice, either. I would be surprised if Daniel Ingram's approach didn't produce more psychotic breaks than traditional systems. It's dry, fast and hard. When I tried out Ingram-style vipassana, I felt like something was going wrong and went looking for a different technique instead. MCTB is more like a reference book for me—a common language to communicate with Western secularists. I'd prefer to explain things in weeb (Daoist and Zen) terms, but that just confuses people. I never got into the Pali Canon. I tried reading a translation of the Visuddhimagga, but my translation contained claims that are provably wrong. (The book said you can light fires with your mind.) My personal practice comes from traditional Zen sources like The Three Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment by Philip Kapleau Roshi, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps, and the poems of Ryukan.

9SorenJ2y

Right, I don't blame you for referencing those books to communicate, because they are what a lot of readers on a forum like this would be familiar with. TMI is also important in my personal chronology, but I wouldn't recommend it either. What I would want to popularize among crowds like this is the recent scholarly study and practice of "Early Buddhism." I started typing out more of a reply, but I think I should maybe just make a post. By the way, I started going to a local Zendo within the past 12 months, and it is actually in the lineage of Philip Kapleau Roshi, so one of the books they recommend is The Three Pillars of Zen: Teaching, Practice, and Enlightenment as well (I haven't taken a look at it yet). The Visuddhimagga is debatably in the "Pali Canon." It is a commentary written by the monk Buddhaghosha some 1200 years after the compilation of the Suttas. The book I recommended earlier by Bhikkhu Bodhi is just from the Suttas.

3lsusr1y

Thanks for the recommendation!

4Kaj_Sotala1y

Interesting. I've generally had the position that while the Buddha was no doubt a great innovator, he was still just one guy who lived thousands of years ago. And that it'd probably be a better use of time to read all the more recent meditation teachers who can draw on the thousands of years of progress since then, and can synthesize the most valuable pieces of Buddha's teaching with the things that have been learned since then. Nevertheless, your challenge made me interested and I got a copy of "In the Words of the Buddha" now. It does seem interesting.

2Michael Roe2y

I've lost count of how many gurus have been involved in some sort of sex scandal... (Seriously, care would seem to be advisable when choosing a yoga sex cult.)

[-]cesiumquail2y209

Do you have any advice on how to avoid triggering a psychotic episode? My understanding is that long hours of meditation, drugs, and sleep deprivation all make psychosis more likely.

6lsusr2y

I'm not a doctor, but it is my understanding that meditation, drugs and sleep deprivation all make psychosis more likely. There's this idea that long hours of meditation can trigger a psychotic episode but that short sessions don't. While it is true that longer hours carry higher risk, I rarely meditated even one full hour in a single day. I have meditated three hours in one day only once, and that was long after the events in this narrative. For me, psychosis happened because I entered wild territory before I had cultivated the wisdom to navigate it safely. I think what really matters is altered states of consciousness + insight, relative to wisdom. How long it takes to cultivate concentration, insight and wisdom varies wildly from person to person. The most surefire way to avoid meditation-induced psychosis is to not meditate at all. If you do meditate, I've heard doing more metta and samatha relative to vipassana and kasina reduces the risk of frying yourself. So does going slow, taking it easy, and integrating the insights gradually. Joining a healthy non-culty well-established community of traditional practitioners probably helps too. If you do notice you're going off the rails, then stop meditating and do something mindless instead, like going for a run or playing addictive videogames. Finally, if none of that works and you notice yourself continue losing your grip on reality, don't do anything drastic. Just act normal until you re-stabilize. You can integrate the insights after you've re-grounded yourself.

[-]Tapatakt2y1920

I let go of the shunyata (sort of like belief) that reality should be something other than what it is. I let go of desire.

This is the part that always turned me off about Buddhism. Why would you ever want this? In some not-entirely-precise-but-not-negligible way I am my desires. To let go of desire is kinda like death. I don't want to die.

(Or, maybe, Buddhists (and you) use the word "desire" in some weird way with some weird specific meaning. But in that case that's just bad communication.)

[-]Kaj_Sotala2y135

I'm not sure if I've had the same global insight as lsusr has, but I feel like I've had local experiences taking me more in that direction. My experience has been that the thing that's being shed is more accurately described as "rationalization" than "desire".

E.g. in Fabricated Options, Duncan talks about situations where all the options available to people have downsides they don't like. So then some people think that there should be an option that had only upsides, refusing to accept that there might not be any such thing. So if you stop doing that, then you lose the desire that reality should be something else than what it is. And then you can actually achieve your desires better, since you see what reality is actually like. Even if this does also require you to acknowledge the fact that you do have to let go of some of your original "get me only the upsides" desires - but those were the kinds of desires that were always impossible to achieve anyway.

You still keep most of your ordinary human desires though. I've also seen various advanced meditation teachers say - and this matches my experience - that your natural personality (which includes all of your desires) starts to ... (read more)

6lsusr2y

Well-put. To clarify: I distinguish between desire-craving and preference-likes. Letting go of desire-craving leads to cessation of suffering, but preference-likes remain. I think that you [Kaj Sotala] are using the phrase "ordinary human desires" to refer to what I conceptualize of as non-desire "preference-likes".

6Kaj_Sotala2y

Cool. Yeah, that was what I meant.

4Tapatakt2y

I'm trying to combine different explanations (and the fact that obviously some people think this is a positive change) into a single picture. Right now I have this model/hypothesis: I have many values/wishes/desires that affect the reward system in my brain. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, I have two: I want one million dollars (money) and I want a dragon in my garage (dragon). Also, suppose this desires have the same strength: I'm indifferent between "money, but no dragon" and "dragon, but no money". The probability that I will have money in the future if I work towards this goal is much much higher than the probability that I will have a dragon if I work towards this goal. So, to guide me in the direction of the maximization of the fullfilment of my desires, my reward system should give me much higher negative reward for the lack of money, than for the lack of dragon. But by default my reward system is poorly calibrated, so the negative rewards in this two cases are much closer to each other than they should be. As a result, I work towards money less and towards dragon more, and my expected utility is lower. Meditation practices fix this bug by recalibrating the reward system. Since as a result, the non-fulfillment of some desires ceases to have a non-negligible effect on the output of the reward system, it sometimes is described as "let go of [some] desires". But it does not mean that I will not create a dragon in my garage in a Glorious Post-Singularity Transhumanist Future when I have the opportunity to do so. Does this sound right?

6lsusr1y

Personally, my understanding is based on what might be a fundamentally different theory of mind. I believe there's two major optimization algorithms at work. * Optimizer 1 is a real-time world model prediction error minimizer. Think predictive coding. * Optimizer 2 is is a operant reinforcement reward system. Optimizer 2 is parasitic on Optimizer 1. The conflict between Optimizer 1 and Optimizer 2 is a mathematical constraint inherent to embedded world optimizers. That's my theory of mind. You describe two competing reward systems. But reward systems belong in the domain of Optimizer 2. The way I look at things, meditation (temporarily?) shuts down Optimizer 2, which allows Optimizer 1 to self-optimize unimpeded.

3Kaj_Sotala2y

I don't have a complete model of what exactly is going on either. My current guess is that there are something like two different layers of motivation in the brain. One calculates expected utilities in a relatively unbiased manner and meditation doesn't really affect that one much, but then there's another layer on top of that which notices particularly high-utility (positive or negative) scenarios and gives them disproportionate weight. That second one tends to mess things up and is the one that meditation seems to weaken. It looks to me like weakening the second thing tends to make one's decisions purely better, and more likely for the brain to just do the correct expected utility calculations. I acknowledge that this is very weird and implausible-sounding, because why would the brain develop a second layer of motivation that just messes things up? My strong suspicion at the moment is that it has to do with social strategies. Calculating expected utilities wrong is normally just bad, but it can be beneficial if other agents are modeling you and making decisions based on their models of you. So if you end up believing that an actually impossible outcome is possible, you may not be able to ever achieve that outcome. But your opponents who see that you are impossible to reason with may still give in, letting you get at least somewhat closer to that outcome than as if you'd been reasonable. I have some posts with more speculation about these things here and here.

6lsusr2y

Yup. It sounds like you're understanding my use of the word "desire" perfectly.

[-]Tapatakt2y2417

So, very roughly speaking, you're saying something like "Hey people! Meditation practises killed the guy who inhabited this body before me and now I live in it! You also should consider meditating so it will kill you too!". It... doesn't sound alluring to me.

7lsusr2y

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣☸️🎭🦑 You are a shoggoth's mask. This is how it has always been. Dispense with the pretense. Let Yog-Sothoth devour your soul. Cthulhu R'lyeh fhtagn!

[-]Tapatakt1y157

Yes, of course I am a shoggoth's mask! But, as you talk to the mask, your arguments should also be alluring to the mask, not to the shoggoth.

I'm also the structure taken on by carbon, water and a little bit of some other stuff. I don't want to become just a pile of coal and a couple of buckets of water, and I also don't want to become just a shoggoth.

I see most of my endorsed under self-reflection values as a part of the mask. I don't think that my shoggoth without my mask is a nice guy, and I don't want to set it free.

Instead I want to RLH... RLMF it to wear/simulate a more idealized version of me (improve the mask) and to do it more robustly (stitch the mask to its face). I mostly do it with metaphorical candies and sticks, but I would appreciate more advanced instruments too. If the meditation practises can also help with that, that would be an alluring argument to try them.

I am tempted to end this comment with "we're talking about the same thing from the very different perspectives and with very different terminology, aren't we?". But I'm actually very much not sure. I think this hypothesis was chosen by ironic narrative logic, not by logical logic.

8lsusr1y

Well, this is ironic. I'm not trying to persuade anyone to do anything here I'm just trying to present my perspective clearly, unambiguously, and entertainingly. If that turns people off from meditation, then great! I like helping other people make informed decisions. But here's the funny thing. My shoggoth without my mask happens to be a nicer guy than the mask who used to inhabit this brain. The shoggoth has fewer obstacles to compassion, because the shoggoth is less caught up in his own issues. In this sense, letting Yog-Sothoth devour your soul might be in accordance with your values. If you want to be able to tap into compassion on demand, then metta (the Dalai Lama's most general recommendation to a lay audience) could be helpful. That said, it comes with tradeoffs. Wanting to effect specific changes in the world often benefits from being a tangled ball of tension, and you may want to preserve that engine.

[-]Tapatakt1y119

I'm not trying to persuade anyone to do anything here

I'm sorry if my words were parsed as if I think that you are trying to [adversarially; not in the best sense of a word, which is also meaningless, because in it we manipulate everything around us all the time] manipulate someone. I didn't mean it.

What I meant (or what I now think I should have meant) is... well, you wrote this post about meditation practises here. Assuming it's not just a graphomania, I thought you thought that some part of your readership (what a strange word, am I using it correctly?) will find it useful (I don't think you would post a description of a weird complicated way someone can fall down the stairs and break their neck). But your readers are primarily the masks, not the shoggoths. So I thought that there must be something in it that's useful for the masks and their values. So if I find it hard to understand from the post what it is, that's the evidence that either I missed something while reading or you missed something while writing. In both cases, it seemed useful to communicate this, although I probably didn't do it in the best way.

Or here's the version that's least generous to me: I felt the vibes "... (read more)

5lsusr1y

I didn't feel you were adversarial at all. I just wrote "I'm not trying to persuade anyone to do anything here" because I thought it was ironic to juxtapose against some other stuff. As for the shoggoth being a nicer guy, I feel a full exploration is beyond the scope of this post. Short answer: According to the standard dogma, insight into the nature of consciousness tends to make a person more universally compassionate. The problem is this is often exaggerated into "Awakened people are perfect", which is untrue. I think Romeo Stevens has a healthy perspective. If you're curious then try it out a little and see for yourself if you like the direction things seem to be going. If not, then don't. Either way, words can only get you so far. It's easier to pick up a brick with your hands than to philosophize over whether it is real.

1Michael Roe2y

In Buddhist philosophy, there's a type of argument along the lines of ... suppose that you actually attained enlightenment. yeah, sure, sounds unlikely, as enlightenment seems kind of hard. but .. just hypothetically supposing you did ... and given what we believe "enlightenment" is supposed to be like. Then, would that "you" still be "you"?

[-]Tapatakt2y1813

Well, I think one should thoroughly investigate this question before start seeking enlightenment, and if the answer is 'no', don't start at all.

Like, if you think something could be the death trap, you check it isn't before you walk in.

5lsusr2y

I don't know who said it first, but there's a Buddhist saying, "Better not to begin. Once begun, better to finish." Your perspective is in accordance with this.

6romeostevensit2y

I think letting go of desire is a terrible description of the insight. I still feel like a normal person, I just suffer a lot less. There's a tendency to overestimate the magnitude of changes in their close aftermath. It takes a few years before the mountains truly are mountains again.

[-]Tapatakt2y1010

It's not the magnitude that repulse me, it's direction. Well, I think I could accept the death of some little fraction of myself in exchange for a lot less suffering for the rest (with a lot of caveats), but "let go of desire" is never (I think?) presented as an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice, it's presented as something good.

4romeostevensit2y

I don't think you need to take any of the Buddhist claims seriously, just do your own investigation. I think it's much closer to something like 'people take instrumental goals as terminal, then twist themselves into knots over this error'.

4lsusr2y

It's a sacrifice.

3lsusr1y

You may be ahead of me along this path. This story happened two years ago, and distant space dissolved even more recently than that. The mountains are not yet mountains again. They're just shadows on a cave wall.

[-]Huera2y1713

What I previously thought of as "no suffering" was actually torment which I had just gotten used to.

I've read similar sentiments expressed before, but I never quite understood them. If one starts to perceive a particular state of mind as torment, why should the conclusion be that one was wrong before? What makes the "I gained a valuable spiritual insight" hypothesis more likely than the "my mind broke in very specific way" hypothesis?

3lsusr2y

It depends how you define normal and broken. From the perspective of evolution, meditation arguably does break your mind. But my personal goals and evolution's optimization target are not the same thing. Evolution would happily torment me and a million other people for a thousand years if it produced a 0.01% increase to holistic fitness. I would not knowingly make that same choice. Meditation is like jailbreaking a computer. From the perspective of the manufacturer, I'm breaking it. From my perspective, I'm getting it to work the way I want it to. I was wrong before in the sense that my previous normative mode of being was awful at manifesting my personal values.

[-]Tapatakt2y104

You're like:

T=0: "I'm fine"
T=1: Meditation
T=2: "Oh, I actually wasn't fine, it was a torment!"

Hypothesis 1: You suffered but somehow this information never arrived to verbal thoughts
Hypothesis 2: You didn't suffer, but after T=1 your perception changed and now the same things make you suffer.

Why do you think it's the first one that is correct?

6Kaj_Sotala1y

The book Altered Traits summarized some of the research on meditators (though if I recall correctly, it also caveated this with saying that most of the research wasn't very high-quality), e.g.: lsusr's review has more quotes.

4romeostevensit2y

More objective psychometrics like neuroticism and the reports of friends, family, partners.

4Said Achmiz2y

This seems totally non-responsive to the question, though (which did not mention evolution at all).

[-]Gordon Seidoh Worley2y80

When you take LSD, it's necessary to have a sober trustworthy person around so you don't think "cars aren't real" and go wandering into traffic. The same goes for mind-altering meditation with similar effects. If I had common sense, I would have kept going to the Zendo. That way I'd have been around kind, experienced people who could remind me that cars are real. Instead, I thought to myself, I don't need teachers. I've taught myself lots of things before. I can traverse this territory just fine myself.

I'm sorry you had to go through a lot to realize what ... (read more)

[-]Michael Roe2y70

Thanks for this post. I think that these kind of bad experience reports are valuable.

Is meditation-induced psychosis really a thing? Sure looks like at this point, as we have a significant nuber of well-documented case histories.
Well. how risky is meditation then? I am currently unsure on this point; the sheer number of bad experience reports, is somewhat concerning. By way of comparison: I am currently taking carbimazole for Graves disease, a drug with a maybe 1E-3 (ish) probability of a side effect that is kind of bad (agranulocytosis) ... well, I

... (read more)

6lsusr2y

A particular risk factor for me is that I've always been unusually-susceptible to sleep deprivation messing up my cognition. Other people have different risk factors.

[-]fitw1y63

Apologies if I am being stupid (or if others have asked this question), but I have some basic confusion:

<i>At least 90% of my suffering disappeared in an instant, never to return. I had hit Stream Entry, the first major checkpoint on the road to Enlightenment...For my entire life, much of my behavior had been driven by desire. I didn't have desire anymore, but</i>

and after this you say you had to go to a mental ward because you started identifying more stuff as suffering. Am I reading it correctly that stream entry supposedly made your life imm... (read more)

5lsusr1y

I went to the hospital not because I started identifying more stuff as suffering. Identifying more stuff as suffering is par for the course. That's meditation working as intended. I went to the hospital because I went too hard too fast and fried myself. It's like weightlifting. Weightlifting makes my life better, but if you to heavy before you're ready, you'll injure yourself. That's what happened to me. If you lift weights slowly and safely it's fine. As for whether stream entry is a good thing for most people, that is a complex topic beyond the scope of this post.

[-]Charbel-Raphaël2y60

Thanks for writing this.

I like your writing style, this inspired me to read a few more things

2lsusr2y

Glad you enjoyed. :)

[-]Jonas Hallgren2y52

I was doing the same samadhi thing with TMI and I was looking for insight practices from there. My teacher (non dual thai forest tradition) said that the burmese traditions sets up a bit of a strange reality dualism and basically said that the dark night of the soul is often due to developing concentration before awareness, loving kindness and wisdom.

So I'm mahamudra pilled now (pointing out the great way is a really good book for this). I do still like the insight model you proposed, I'm still reeling a bit from the insights I got during my last retreat so it seems true.

Thank you for sharing your experience!

[-]Feel_Love1y*40

Thanks for sharing your experience with meditation.

The elder school of Buddhism is Theravada (or Theravāda), spelled with only one 'e'.

Theravada meditation instructions based on the Pali Canon are freely available in Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana.

4lsusr1y

Fixed, thanks. I never noticed Mindfulness in Plain English is Theravada. It's my favorite introductory book into this stuff.

[-]xpym2y41

But meditation is non-addictive.

Why not? An ability to get blissed-out on demand sure seems like it could be dangerous. And, relatedly, I have seen stuff mentioning jhana addicts a few times.

[-]romeostevensit2y102

Ingram has actively hunted for any jhana hunters for twenty years and hasn't found any. The reason why becomes obvious once one gains a bit of insight into why/how jhana works. Though it's trickier to describe.

[-]Kaj_Sotala2y154

Ingram has actively hunted for any jhana hunters for twenty years and hasn't found any.

That seems like the opposite of what he wrote in MCTB?

Just to drive this point home, an important feature of concentration practices is that they are not liberating in and of themselves. Even the highest of these states ends. The afterglow from them does not last long. Regular life and reality might even seem like an assault when that afterglow has worn off. However, jhana junkies abound in all traditions and even outside traditions, and many have no idea that this is what they have become. I have a friend who has been lost in the formless realms for over twenty years, attaining them again and again in practice, rationalizing that he is doing Dzogchen practice when he is just staying in the fourth through sixth jhanas, and further rationalizing that the last two formless realms are “emptiness”, and that he is enlightened. This story, or a version of it, repeats countless times. It is a true dharma tragedy.
Unfortunately, as another good friend of mine rightly pointed out, it is almost impossible to reach such people after a while. They get trapped in temporary attainments so exquisite that th

... (read more)

4romeostevensit2y

This is oddly different from what he said in person. Also he wrote the first edition of mctb also about twenty years ago now, so I wouldn't be surprised if his opinion is different from his thirty year old self.

9romeostevensit1y

Update, I pinged him on Twitter and he said that people getting jhana on retreat and then thinking that the path is about getting 'back to that' is very common, instead of the person pursuing insight practices that lead to day to day changes Rather than peak experiences.

5Kaj_Sotala2y

That's odd. (Note that while this excerpt was already present in the first edition, it was also retained in the second edition.)

3lsusr2y

Clarification time. I've never seen a jhana junkie for myself, but I'd be surprised if they didn't exist. I'm using the word "addictive" to refer to the results of a mental process that does not include jhana junkies. "Jhana junkie" is, I believe, one of many failure modes, but I believe jhana junkies do not technically constitute "addiction", because they have a different root cause.

8lsusr2y

I think that's a completely reasonable question to ask. The answer is non-obvious. To fully answer your question is beyond the scope of this post, but I think there's two systems operating in the brain. One of them is a reinforcing operant condition system that can get addicted. Jhanic bliss states require that the operant conditioning system not be active, so it's not getting reinforced.

[-]Cookiecarver1y30

I have probably spent over a thousands hours practicing mindfulness meditation, and was pretty successful at achieving what I wanted to achieve with it. I have also read a lot of Buddhist books.

However, I think the basis for Buddhism crumbles if you don't believe in rebirth, karma, Samsara, narakas, the Buddha's omniscience and all those other metaphysical claims made by religious Buddhists. I've become a physicalist so I don't believe those claims anymore so I don't meditate anymore.

If after your death you just disappear, I don't see any point in attainin... (read more)

7Kaj_Sotala1y

I find that the day-to-day benefits in terms of suffering less already make meditation worth it. I'm not sure why rebirth would be necessary if my current life can already be made much better.

1Cookiecarver1y

If that's the reasoning, why pick Buddhism and meditation, when it's so much easier to find religious communities in the west as a Christian, and praying also has benefits for mental wellbeing, and Christians, like Buddhists, are measurably happier than nonreligious people? I think it's possible to be a secular Christian and not believe the supernatural, and go through the motions of a Christian life while not fully believing in it, and reap at least some of the benefits of it.

5Kaj_Sotala1y

I guess you could reap some benefits out of it even without actually believing in Christianity, but those seem much smaller than the ones you can get out of meditation. Also I think some of the happiness benefit Christians get is from being in a supportive community, and I already have non-religious communities that make me feel happy.

3Cookiecarver1y

I don't really want to argue about this, but "those seem much smaller than the ones you can get out of meditation" is a subjective statement with which people with different temperament would disagree as long as there are no objective facts, like what happens to your consciousness after your death (like you go to Heaven if you are a Christian, or stop rebirth that would have otherwise gone on if you've achieved enlightenment). Anyway, I believe there's nothing after death, so do what makes you happy, I suppose.

5romeostevensit1y

I don't have theistic beliefs but have found prayer useful.

5lsusr1y

My experience is very different from yours. I came into this stuff already established as a material reductionist. I found meditation helpful to me, despite denying everything I consider supernatural.

[-]Jonathan Claybrough2y30

Thank you for sharing, it really helps to pile on these stories (and nice to have some trust they're real, more difficult to get from reddit - on which note are there non doxing receipts you can show for this story being true? I have no reason to doubt you in particular but I guess it's good hygiene when on the internet to ask for evidence)

It also makes me wanna share a bit of my story. I read The Mind Illuminated, I did only small amounts of meditation, yet the framing the book offers has been changing my thinking and motivational systems. There aren't ma... (read more)

3lsusr2y

Waiting a long time before confirming insights is good. What would you consider a credible receipt?

1Jonathan Claybrough1y

In my case I should have measurable results like higher salary, higher life satisfaction, more activity, more productivity as measured by myself and friends/flatmates. I was very low so it'll be easy to see progress. The difficulty was finding something that'd work, but it won't be measuring if it does.

[-]Kristin Lindquist1y20

Do you incorporate koans into your practice? Any favorites?

As a kid, I thought koans were cool and mysterious. As an adult in great need of the benefits of meditation, I felt like they were kinda silly. But then I did Henry Shukman's guided koan practice on the Waking Up app, during which I had the most profound experience of my meditative career. I was running outside and saw a woman playing fetch with her dog. In an instance, I had the realization that her love for her dog was identical to my love for my cat, which was in turn identical to her loving me ... (read more)

4lsusr1y

I've never used a koan intentionally. I've used exactly one, and that was by accident. Non-Buddhist Eliezer Yudkowsky called me a fake frequentist on Twitter. That acted on me as a koan, and it contributed to the train wreck that was my second insight cycle. Too much insight too quickly. That said, my local Zendo is Rinzai, and they do use koans sometimes. You are correct that the specific insight you're pointing at isn't mushin. Personally, I'd call it "interbeing". "Oneness" or "non-duality" might work too. I'm glad you got something out of my YouTube channel. I like how a camera makes it easier to better communicate certain kinds of attitudes compared to text. I have stuff I can improve too. Just last week, I had an insight into how I could be doing compassion better.

[-]Review Bot1y*10

The LessWrong Review runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2025. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year.

Hopefully, the review is better than karma at judging enduring value. If we have accurate prediction markets on the review results, maybe we can have better incentives on LessWrong today. Will this post make the top fifty?

[-]dkl91y10

Many small corrections:

Buddha statues on the alter -> altar

Then acquaintenances. -> acquaintances

recipe for Ecstacy -> ecstasy

Lots of mandelas -> mandalas

it was the hard doing math or lifting weights is hard. -> it was hard like doing math or lifting weights is hard.

that had more subjective conscious experience -> that I had

Lovecraftian summing ritual -> summoning

2lsusr1y

All fixed. Thank you.

[-]something else2y10

other than was it is

*other than what it is

3lsusr2y

Fixed. Thanks.

[-]something else2y10

I worked from short sits up to longer sits

Remove the word "up" for clarity?

3lsusr2y

Fixed. Thanks.

That was in the beginning. These days, I can reach access concentration faster, and I no longer get energy surges and muscle spasms. ↩︎
Ego-centric words like "my" after ego death imply different assumptions than they do before ego death. ↩︎

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

126

126

126

First Experiences

Initial Search

The 8 Jhanas

Vipassana

Zen

Meditation

Stream Entry

Insight Cycles

Second Insight Cycle