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Comment by digbybk | Hacker News Reader

When I was looking for a group in my area to meditate with, it was tough finding one that didn't appear to be a cult. And yet I think Buddhist meditation is the best tool for personal growth humanity has ever devised. Maybe the proliferation of cults is a sign that Yudkowsky was on to something.

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None of them are practicing Buddhist meditation though, same for the "personal growth" oriented meditation styles.

Buddhist meditation exists only in the context of the Four Noble Truths and the rest of the Buddha's Dhamma. Throwing them away means it stops being Buddhist.

I disagree, but we'd be arguing semantics. In any case, the point still stands: you can just as easily argue that these rationalist offshoots aren't really Rationalist.

I'm not familiar enough with their definitions to argue about them, but meditations techniques predate Buddhism. In fact, the Buddha himself learned them from two teachers before developing his own path. Also, the style of meditation taught nowadays (accepting non-reactive awareness) is not how it's described in the Pali Canon.

This isn’t just a "must come from the Champagne region of France, otherwise it’s sparkling wine" bickering, but actual widespread misconceptions of what counts as Buddhism. Many ideas floating in Western discourse are basically German Romanticism wrapped in Orientalist packaging, not matching neither Theravada nor Mahayana teachings (for example, see the Fake Buddha Quotes project).

So the semantics are extremely important when it comes to spiritual matters. Flip one or two words and the whole metaphysical model goes in a completely different direction. Even translations add distortions, so there’s no room to be careless.

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