Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

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> give your brain a task and focus just on that

Not really. It is important to maintain conscious. When you simply "focus on just that" you may then just wake up once the task is complete and find out you've went through it automatically like if it was a [non-lucid] dream.

As about meditating while sleeping - I have not explored this part enough. Renowned Dzogchen teachers Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche have books on this subject. A Zen teacher quoted by Alan Watts also said "when you are hungry - eat, when you are tired - sleep" and explained that ordinary people don't actually follow this as they think about countless things while eating and see countless dreams while sleeping. If we go slightly farther than secular mindfulness dares to go and consider the Buddhist religious goal of after-death liberation, they say "dream yoga is not an essential part of practice, but how do you expect to stay conscious in death if you can't even stay conscious in sleeping"?

As for me, I consider unmindfullness a voluntary death, throwing parts of the life time you have been given (by the G-d, or figuratively - whatever you prefer to believe, this doesn't change the matter) away. You only live and actually own/use your time when mindful. When you are not it just disappears. AFAIK even Immanuel Kant believed something like this.

> You only live and actually own/use your time when mindful. When you are not it just disappears.

This sounds both judgemental and obsessive, just so you know.

Why? Now I'm here and enjoy the moment. Now I'm not and the body just lives on its own doing it's job like a robot could when I could be dead and not mindful of anything. A minute is gone. To me this seems rather simple. Perhaps my verbal abilities are not enough to explain.

Once, as a schoolboy, I've heard about Buddhists who train to always stay consciousness while living, talking and whatever, I considered this amazing and have then progresses from 80% daydreaming an 19% struggling life to some way more (although still very far from 100%) present, more mine and more happy.

Well, you appear to be telling others that their lives and experiences have no value without mindfulness.

You also seem to be telling us that the only way you feel your life experience has any value is through this thing also, that your own experience is hollow or even non-existent without it. That seems somewhat extreme.

I would make the same comment to (for instance) someone telling us that they live every moment of their lives through Jesus, and that without his love life can have no meaning.

"Being with Jesus" is a rather vague concept which. Different people may understand it differently. Often it even is primitivized to just attributing yourself to a church.

What I am telling, however, is a simple difference between automatic functioning in semi-hypnotic state and living in awake state. Let's take it to the extreme: imagine you were given a choice to spend the rest of your life in deep sleep (the kind you can't remember dreams after) and wake up just minutes before die. Would you agree? Would you consider such life making much sense or value to you? I wouldn't. To me it seems almost the same as dying straight away.

In fact Christianity includes the doctrine of Nepsis which is very much related to this (although many people believe it only means avoiding alcohol).

> "Being with Jesus" is a rather vague concept which. Different people may understand it differently.

Which is why I said if someone tells me that "they live every moment of their lives through Jesus, and that without his love life can have no meaning."

> What I am telling, however, is a simple difference between automatic functioning in semi-hypnotic state and living in awake state.

Do you not see how judgemental that appears, that unless people join in with your special thing they are effectively automata, asleep, may as well be dead?

I'm glad you have found benefit in your path through life, but I'm not sure one should assume that yours is the only valuable way to live, or indeed the only way to actually 'live'.

I believe I get your point now, hopefully you will understand mine.

Looking from the outside, from the practical (economical) point of view the value/meaning of a unit does not depend on whether it is conscious or not - it just does the same job. Somebody probably can replace me with a future version of GPT3 once and not even my mom will notice (as she lives in a different country and my job also is writing e-mails).

Looking from the outside, from the moral, empathetic and spiritual points of view (although devotees of some cults will argue), and from my own actual view all lives are absolutely equally valuable and meaningful. I really feel and see this way, not because this is a moral or religious law.

I don't judge anybody based on anything, let alone on how mindful their are. I even go further and believe no criminal is actually a wicked person - they just feel and act the ways they do because they are not mindful about how bad (and conditioned) their actions are and how they could avoid them. In many cases this even is a scientific fact.

Looking from the inside, however, I indeed believe I enjoy more value out of my life if I am more awake, conscious for longer and more frequent periods of time. Simply saying it's not worth to pay for ticket and go to a cinema if you are deadly tired and will most probably fall asleep there anyway. One night on a vacation I got terribly drunk. The next morning we went to a museum and that was a waste because I could barely stand on my feet fighting drowsiness - there could be no paintings on the walls and I would not notice. The day passed as if there were no such day, I've got nothing but the next number on the calendar.

Do you understand what I mean? It absolutely isn't my goal to argue the hell out of us or convince you people with ADHD (like myself) are worthless, I only keep writing to make sure what I wrote is understood correctly (not necessarily agreed with).

I understand that's how you feel, that without meditation and mindfulness you do not feel fully awake and 'conscious', though I suspect what you mean by 'conscious' is different to what I might mean. I am glad you've found something that increases your enjoyment and appreciation of your life.

I enjoy and appreciate mine, too.

And hopefully we all learn pretty quickly that drinking too much can utterly ruin the next day....

This could be a nice end of the conversation as it was obviously meant to be but now I feel very curious about this:

> I suspect what you mean by 'conscious' is different to what I might mean

What do you mean? I would sincerely appreciate if you could dedicate some more time and try to explain.

Well, to me, the semantic definition of being conscious is simply to be awake, rather than asleep, insensible, anaesthetised, blacked out or whatever else.

You seem to have a slightly different definition, I think, based on these remarks -

  "It is important to maintain conscious"
  "I've heard about Buddhists who train to always stay consciousness while living, talking and whatever,"
  "I enjoy more value out of my life if I am more awake, conscious for longer and more frequent periods of time"

I maintain consciousness whenever I am awake, because that's what being awake is, as far as I understand the word. The second quote, well being conscious is a pre-requisite for me talking (unless you count mumbling in my sleep, which does happen). And I don't think in that last quote you're talking about deliberate sleep deprivation so you can be awake longer (you could be?).

It just made me think you were not using the word in the same sense I would. Do you think it's possible to be awake (i.e. not asleep) without necessarily being conscious? If so that would just confirm we have different definitions of that word.

I could be wrong.

(And I don't especially want to direct this conversation towards "what really is consciousness?" because it's a very slippery eel of a topic)

I see. Thank you for the explanation. Indeed, we mean slightly different things.

Have you ever (I would be surprised if you never ever had, but perhaps this doesn't happen to you often) went outdoors and then suddenly started wondering if you have turnt off the stove/iron, locked the door and taken the key with you? This happens to me every day because I always exit "unconsciously" in the meaning of the word I intended. When we go together with my wife she would ask me "have you taken the key"? I respond "yes" automatically (here I am speaking but "unconsciously") because such is the habit and I am "daydreaming" ("unconscious" as I label it) at the moment, we lock the door (it locks itself when closed) and then I always feel a boost of adrenaline (in such a degree I have even started taking beta-blockers as this caused heart ache) and think "have I? bloody hell! I probably haven't, we will have to call a locksmith, wait an hour and pay $100 to get back in" (and occasionally this turns out to be the case). Then I become "conscious" and tell myself it's not a big deal, whatever, check the pockets calmly (usually finding the key) and go on. The very phenomenon of such strong anxiety at the moment itself takes place because I still am not really "conscious" at it (if I were I wold understand it's not a big deal). This wouldn't occur if I were leaving the home "consciously". I could put a huge red "wake up" sign on the inside of my door but I know I will get used to it soon and it will stop working.

The "doorway effect" has even gotten some scientific recognition recently[1].

Another example of unconscious speaking is when I am reading or writing something and somebody talks to me - I get less than 30% of what they say and "consciously" answer "yes" to everything then have no idea what did I agree with (and often can't even remember I said anything). And this is not intentional behaviour - they started when I was reading and I was not "conscious" enough to make a "conscious decision" (I tend to believe this phrase is pretty standard English) and switching to just listening them.

This is what I meant.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-throu...

The doorway effect is fascinating. I don't tend to experience worry on leaving the house as you describe (I know many do), but I certainly walk into rooms and forget why I'm there.

I would talk about the issues you raise more as issues of attention, focus and division of attention, than whether one is conscious or not.

Though semantically of course I agree that there is overlap between being conscious of something, of your surroundings, of other people, of your actions etc. When someone says just "being conscious" without a particular object, I think of something different. Language is a funny, imprecise and overloaded thing.

I feel like "awareness" might be a good term to describe what they are meaning by "conscious"

I think they mean conscious as in "to be conscious of", for example: I exited my house while daydreaming/thinking about other things, so I was not "conscious of" the fact that I did not bring my keys with me aka I did not have awareness or was not operating in the moment/mindfully because my mind was elsewhere

I think they're attempting to describe the difference between being present/aware of every moment we experience, vs. a habitual 'autopilot state' that we can find ourselves in (the phenomena of driving somewhere and then not even remembering the drive there, for instance) where we're really not aware of what's going on in our lives, because the mundane things are so habitual that we don't even need to be fully aware of what we're doing to do it - but that alternatively, choosing and teaching ourselves to be aware at all times, even during our mundane, habitual routines, is potentially a better way to exist

Exactly. The only problem with this explanation is "daydreaming/thinking about other things" doesn't really imply "my mind was elsewhere" it often is "nowhere" in these terms. Oftentimes I'm not unaware of something just because I concentrated my full awareness on something else, I may be completely unaware of one thing (I should have been concentrated at) and just slightly aware (like of in an ordinary non-lucid dream) of the other I've been distracted to. Or this can even be just one thing I'm concentrated at (and not thinking about anything else) yet not really aware of it (this happens often when reading (it harms retaining then), writing (making stupid mistakes), speaking (making you say things and make sounds you wouldn't want to), watching TV or, if you kindly excuse, nose picking). Whenever I am doing a pleasant activity (like just doing nothing or watching a TV show) I force myself (with partial success) to be aware of every moment of it so I actually enjoy it rather than fall into a sort of a hypnotic state and "wake up" once it is over. This improved my life a lot and I would hardly learn to do so without a clue from the Buddhists.

Thank you for your reply- I know what you mean by "nowhere"- and actually that's a good way to put it. I was having a hard time articulating that myself but I agree- often my mind is "nowhere" instead of "elsewhere".

I don't think that's sufficient.

Being mindful and doing nothing is still doing nothing.

You should be doing measurable work, otherwise your minute is gone, and it's just as gone whether you're mindful during that time or not. You still changed nothing, and you can't backtrack to tell if you were doing nothing or being mindful while doing nothing.

This is a matter of philosophy, your "world view". AFAIK Buddhists don't believe you have to change anything or even pursue a happy state. As for me at this phase of my development being mindfully happy (and not hypnotized happy like under narcotics or in a pleasant dream) makes the most sense (and happiness often comes when you do anything mindfully - AFAIK this is called "sukha"). And in fact this is not useless even from a practical (economical) point of view - this is genuine recreation letting you take the most out of your resting (and even doing chores) which makes you more stable and efficient after that.

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