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Comment by sova | Hacker News Reader

try and see. if your clocks tick slower it's working.

I have been meditating for over a decade now. Started when I messed with lucid dreaming as a teenager. I am still unconvinced there is any benefit to it whatsoever, at least to a person who otherwise focuses on their work for large periods of time.

Kelly McGonigal from Stanford or Harvard argues that it increases willpower, but so does just doing things.

There was a study showing Transcendental meditation decreases blood pressure, but Transcendental meditation is a gimmick and the study was funded by the people pushing the system, etc.

All the Harvard studies about core temperature increases show that the monks are actively contracting their muscles to achieve the effect. Same story with slowing down heart-rate. Neither of which ever achieves out-of-norm ranges.

why do you keep doing it if you see no benefit whatsoever?

Helps me fall asleep fast. But so does running through the relaxing individual body parts exercise. Maybe out of paranoia that I am missing something and I only do it for 10 minutes a day.

Oh, and good ideas come to me while I am trying not to focus on anything. Almost like the mind is trying to find an excuse to break single-point attention.

edit: Also, meditation traditions are found all over the world - for example a Christian mystic, Teresa of Avila meditated all the time.

edit 2 in reply to below: Sure, semantics, but you are definitely right to some degree. The difference is that the mechanism behind relaxation is clear.

> so does running through the relaxing individual body parts exercise

Isn't that a form of meditation too?

Yes, they call it mindfulness now in techmonad but it's also been around forever.

"Be still and know that I am God" could be viewed as an instruction to meditate.

"When asked by a student about the use of geometry, Euclid responded by giving him three obols (coins), since "he must need make gain out of what he learns."

>Transcendental meditation is a gimmick

Source? TM is just vedic (mantra) meditation.

The source is the fact that it's taught by a pyramid-scheme group of teachers who teach you "special secret phrases."

edit: Editing because I really do want to understand - the mantras serve no purpose as far as I can tell. There is no reason why you can't focus on "I am a good boy today" rather than something in Hindi. It's just a chant, and trying to teach a "special personalized" chant and charge for it as dishonest.

edit 2 to reply to the post below (can't post so much in one thread): Sure, it's not a source, but it explains the logic of why it's a gimmick.

edit 3: @sol: And this makes some sort of sense to you? You claim to understand the mechanism behind this or that someone who made up a random phrase for money does?

That's not a source.

The chants might help for people who have certain autoimmune conditions, it's a bit of vocal rehabilitation / voice therapy. Some of the mantras are tongue twisters :)

I know someone whose lupus went into remission after they started chanting, but there was one very particular chant that they found working for them.

Based on your tone, it sounds like you've already made up your mind. But in the case that you're asking in good faith: the idea behind the mantras is that it is a meaningless sound that preoccupies the language part of your brain without giving it an actual concept to think about. When you repeat and focus on the mantra in this way, the process of meditation feels more like falling asleep (this is what they mean when they say "effortless"). I found this technique far easier and more effective than any other type of mediation. There is no reason you could not look up a mantra (or come up with your own) and practice this technique for free.

TM does charge a fee, which I found reasonable for 90 minutes of 1-on-1 instruction, 4 evenings of classes, and lifetime access to any TM center worldwide. They also have a sliding scale and many opportunities for scholarships. They will tell you that 1-on-1 instruction is integral to the learning process. I did mindfulness meditation for 3 years before switching to TM, and the value I got from the instruction was to simplify my natural tendency to over-complicate these processes (don't think, do). The instruction was absolutely necessary for me, but it very likely would not be necessary for a subset of people.

I understand the inclination to dismiss it as a pyramid scheme or a cult, as the latter was my hangup to trying TM sooner. My opinion: if it is a cult, then it's a bottom-up cult (in that the source of its cult-ness is the obsession of the followers, rather than as the intent from the top). This is very similar to my experience at a Tony Robbins 4 day event; the two days with Robbins were life-changing and _phenomenal_, but the days without him were so bad that I walked out. I tried talking to other attendees about the qualitative difference, but literally nobody was having it, and some of them even got aggressive with me. However off-putting bad sessions and rabid followers may be, it does not change the efficacy, meaning, and power of the experience I had.

TM has a free 90-minute class that I encourage everyone to check out, once we're out of this mess.

Thanks for your reply, I really do post in hopes someone says something I am missing.

I think as soon as you rename it it slowly starts losing its original meaning and connotations.

Contracting the muscles doesn't cause the heat. It's used to stoke the fire. But once it's going it keeps going without muscular contraction.

The goal is the "heart's sure release" Just sitting still and quietly will calm the mind, but without penetrative insight into the nature of reality, we are beading up on the pyrex sheet of reality instead of coming to know what is common to all. Essentially, there are a lot of habitual patterns of grasping and aversion (mainly grasping) that keep Awareness tethered to the mortal coil and also tethered to a lot of cramped psychic space.

While I have not tried Transcendental Meditation, I do have some knowledge of the fundamental notions of Buddha's teaching and would say that meditating on compassion over and over again until you weep for all sentient beings is essential to eliminating the hard shell of the intellect that keeps us from being receptive and sensitive to the abiding nature of reality.

In a similar way, you can consider one mushroom and its limited awareness of the forest. If the mushroom were to contemplate a compassionate wish for other mushrooms, the identity-difference would dissolve and the mushroom could become aware of the whole forest floor. Just a simple metaphor, but perhaps the image is clear.

Meditating can sharpen your focus, but meditation cannot take you all the way there without knowledge of the way things are in a phenomenological sense.

So if you need a recommended regimen, start with compassion and when your compassion is strong ponder identitylessness and interdependence.

  Pray to find the perfect resources and they will find you.

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