Meditation is a trap!!

[r0ckyreed]

People throw this word meditation around all the time. But what does it actually mean? What is meditation?

Give me a simple, specific, and clear definition of meditation. The issue with some meditation teachers like Osho is that they define everything as meditation. This is a poor operational definition of meditation. When everything becomes a meditation, then how is that different if nothing was a meditation?

Meditation seems like it is more than just being a witness. 

I guarantee that there are certain “meditations” that are a complete waste of time. If you say you can meditate while playing videogames, scrolling on Facebook, going for a run, then this seems like you do not really know what meditation is.

To have the deepest meditation possible, you have to have the right environment and right practice. If you are scrolling on Facebook and just being a witness to your thoughts, that isn’t meditation because it is an oxymoron to say that you can achieve a deep state of mindfulness while doing such a mindless activity.

In order to meditate effectively, you need to set up the right conditions. What are these conditions? What is meditation really? Can meditation actually increase your intelligence and understanding or is it purely a myth? How can you achieve understanding through a thoughtless mind? How is thoughtlessness/stillness and mindlessness different or are they?

I argue that extreme long term meditation is a trap. There is a whole world to see. There is so much growth that you can experience inn the world. Buddhism glorifies the lifestyle of staring at a cave wall for 10 years and calling that meditation and enlightenment. But how are you exactly living a meaningful life of service this way? What is the point of staring at a cave wall or closing your eyes for 2 hours a day, essentially sleeping while you are awake, chanting some mantra, when instead you could travel the world and be just as mindful? If Osho says everything is a meditation, then there is absolutely zero point in closing your eyes, counting your breaths and staring at a cave wall. Do you all not see the contradiction? If everything is a meditation, then why become a sedentary, thoughtless Buddhist Zombie?

Edit: I would define real meditation as a state of deep curiosity, contemplation, and gratitude of the beauty of existence. Anything else isn’t meditation. If you are sitting and counting breaths but aren’t in a state of deep curiosity, contemplation, and gratitude, then you aren’t meditating!!

Edited September 1 by r0ckyreed

[integration journey]

Vipassna meditation helped me distinguish aversion and craving in me so that I’m not attached to those powerful emotions too much 

[r0ckyreed]

7 minutes ago, integration journey said:

Vipassna meditation helped me distinguish aversion and craving in me so that I’m not attached to those powerful emotions too much 

I just added my definition of meditation above.

Yes, but what is the purpose of distinguishing aversion and craving and not being attached to emotions? How does that add to increase your curiosity and gratitude?

Edited September 1 by r0ckyreed

[integration journey]

7 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

I just added my definition of meditation above.

Yes, but what is the purpose of distinguishing aversion and craving and not being attached to emotions? How does that add to increase your curiosity and gratitude?

By seeing how my emotions work, I become naturally curious and contemplative to my truest nature. I then become greatful that I investigated my sensations and become more aligned to my true self.  Vipassana meditation+ self enquiry has helped me tremendously as a spirtual practise. 

[Inliytened1]

49 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

People throw this word meditation around all the time. But what does it actually mean? What is meditation?

Give me a simple, specific, and clear definition of meditation. The issue with some meditation teachers like Osho is that they define everything as meditation. This is a poor operational definition of meditation. When everything becomes a meditation, then how is that different if nothing was a meditation?

Meditation seems like it is more than just being a witness. 

I guarantee that there are certain “meditations” that are a complete waste of time. If you say you can meditate while playing videogames, scrolling on Facebook, going for a run, then this seems like you do not really know what meditation is.

To have the deepest meditation possible, you have to have the right environment and right practice. If you are scrolling on Facebook and just being a witness to your thoughts, that isn’t meditation because it is an oxymoron to say that you can achieve a deep state of mindfulness while doing such a mindless activity.

In order to meditate effectively, you need to set up the right conditions. What are these conditions? What is meditation really? Can meditation actually increase your intelligence and understanding or is it purely a myth? How can you achieve understanding through a thoughtless mind? How is thoughtlessness/stillness and mindlessness different or are they?

I argue that extreme long term meditation is a trap. There is a whole world to see. There is so much growth that you can experience inn the world. Buddhism glorifies the lifestyle of staring at a cave wall for 10 years and calling that meditation and enlightenment. But how are you exactly living a meaningful life of service this way? What is the point of staring at a cave wall or closing your eyes for 2 hours a day, essentially sleeping while you are awake, chanting some mantra, when instead you could travel the world and be just as mindful? If Osho says everything is a meditation, then there is absolutely zero point in closing your eyes, counting your breaths and staring at a cave wall. Do you all not see the contradiction? If everything is a meditation, then why become a sedentary, thoughtless Buddhist Zombie?

Edit: I would define real meditation as a state of deep curiosity, contemplation, and gratitude of the beauty of existence. Anything else isn’t meditation. If you are sitting and counting breaths but aren’t in a state of deep curiosity, contemplation, and gratitude, then you aren’t meditating!!

Just Being.. its sitting in pure Being.  There are no thoughts.   Thoughts, if they arise, aee allowed to pass away. So you are left with what is actually prior to the ego.   Just pure awareness itself.

[Jordan]

Meditation is a term that covers both meditative states and meditative techniques. Meditative states are those states in which you are more calm and focused than usual. When you say you are meditating, you are doing a technique in order to have a higher chance of entering a meditative state. I think you can make a good argument that you can get many of the benefits without putting a lot of time into it. I haven't been meditating much recently but I would like to be more consistent because when I am it seems to allow me to enjoy my life much more. It helped me learn to really enjoy simple things at a level of blissfulness I would never have before when walking in the park or driving to work ext. It is like sharpening an axe before chopping wood. 

You seem to think people can just go travel the world and be just as mindful whether or not they meditate. That doesn't seem to be the case for me. The difference between going a year without meditating and meditating daily for 3-4 months is quite obvious in my level of contentment and making wise choices, my understanding of situations overall.

Edited September 1 by Jordan

[manuel bon]

Osho doesn't define everything as meditation, you didn't understand. What he says is that you have to make everything a meditation. You need to be mindful of your actions, feel your body, your breath and your thoughts. That's how scrolling on FB can become a meditation. Staring at a wall for hours is a concentration exercise to reach meditative state.

[manuel bon]

Also keep in mind that many teachers and schools use this term in different ways and to indicate different things. 

[r0ckyreed]

9 hours ago, integration journey said:

By seeing how my emotions work, I become naturally curious and contemplative to my truest nature. I then become greatful that I investigated my sensations and become more aligned to my true self.  Vipassana meditation+ self enquiry has helped me tremendously as a spirtual practise. 

Good. I would agree. My issue is that people think that to meditate, you have to shut off and quiet the mind. This is not meditation but more like what cults use to indoctrinate. You have to be thinking in life if you want to be intelligent. Of course, it is good to balance that with quieting the mind. But you don’t have to sit cross legged and count your breaths to do that. I find that if I work out and go to the gym, I am more present than when I try to meditate. Counting my breaths and closing my eyes has never made me more blissful than walking in nature and contemplating the beauty of existence.

If I had a choice between going to a 10 day Vipassana and 10 days in a national park. I will take the 10 days in a national park everytime. Life is too short to be sitting on your ass for 10 days. My point is why do that when you get more benefits doing something else.

[r0ckyreed]

9 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

Just Being.. its sitting in pure Being.  There are no thoughts.   Thoughts, if they arise, aee allowed to pass away. So you are left with what is actually prior to the ego.   Just pure awareness itself.

I would agree. But you don’t have to sit with eyes closed with no thoughts to experience the truth of being. Since thoughts are part of reality, it would be a mistake to not use them to contemplate. Life is too short for me to sit all day with eyes closed. I’m a very active person and I think you can access truth by not meditating.

[r0ckyreed]

8 hours ago, Jordan said:

You seem to think people can just go travel the world and be just as mindful whether or not they meditate. That doesn't seem to be the case for me. The difference between going a year without meditating and meditating daily for 3-4 months is quite obvious in my level of contentment and making wise choices, my understanding of situations overall.

Be honest though. If you won free tickets to go travel Europe or go on a 10 day Vipassana retreat in Costa Rica, I bet you’d pick the travel through Europe. If you can make everything a meditation, then there is absolutely no point in sitting in one place for 10 days. It’s a complete waste of time. I meditated for 5 hours straight and it was a waste of time. I can be more happy walking outside and running and more connected to being than doing some monotonous activity like closing my eyes and focusing on my breath and chanting a mantra.

[r0ckyreed]

33 minutes ago, manuel bon said:

Osho doesn't define everything as meditation, you didn't understand. What he says is that you have to make everything a meditation. You need to be mindful of your actions, feel your body, your breath and your thoughts. That's how scrolling on FB can become a meditation. Staring at a wall for hours is a concentration exercise to reach meditative state.

He literally does in his book called meditation. He says meditation is simply being the witness to whatever you experience. He says you can meditate while driving, while running, while dancing, while hiking, while having sex, etc. What I’m arguing is that if everything can be a meditation, then why the Hell would you won’t to confine yourself to 10 years in a freaking room staring at a wall and chanting a mantra? Life is too short and there is a big world to explore. If you can meditate everywhere, then you would miss out on a lot of opportunities spending everyday in a room. Meditation seems like a prison to me that one confines themselves to. You don’t need to sit down for 1 hour with no thoughts. You might as well be dead by how some people practice with 5-10 hours of meditation a day.

[Ishanga]

16 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

Be honest though. If you won free tickets to go travel Europe or go on a 10 day Vipassana retreat in Costa Rica, I bet you’d pick the travel through Europe. If you can make everything a meditation, then there is absolutely no point in sitting in one place for 10 days. It’s a complete waste of time. I meditated for 5 hours straight and it was a waste of time. I can be more happy walking outside and running and more connected to being than doing some monotonous activity like closing my eyes and focusing on my breath and chanting a mantra.

Your looking at it in the wrong context.. There are Householder Paths and Brahmacharya Path, most all of us here are Householders, we have families and work and social lives, the Brahmacharya are completely devoted to Spiritual Paths, those types will sit in Sadhana/Meditation for 5hrs a day, Householders do not, they do maybe an hour a day tops of what ppl think meditation is, eyes closed and sitting, the rest of the day is full of activity and then sleep, during those times, One is working on Awareness, Living Now, One Pointedness(focus), Responding vs Reacting, practical stuff like this.. Lots of this is dependent on two factors, Your Karma and Your Intention in Life, ppl today are too multi focused and on things that are not even their own creation, but borrowed dreams type stuff... 

[manuel bon]

32 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

He literally does in his book called meditation. He says meditation is simply being the witness to whatever you experience. He says you can meditate while driving, while running, while dancing, while hiking, while having sex, etc. What I’m arguing is that if everything can be a meditation, then why the Hell would you won’t to confine yourself to 10 years in a freaking room staring at a wall and chanting a mantra? Life is too short and there is a big world to explore. If you can meditate everywhere, then you would miss out on a lot of opportunities spending everyday in a room. Meditation seems like a prison to me that one confines themselves to. You don’t need to sit down for 1 hour with no thoughts. You might as well be dead by how some people practice with 5-10 hours of meditation a day.

Nobody is telling you that you should meditate 5-10 hours a day. That's precisely why Osho says to live in meditation, so you can enjoy life more. Meditation is not about doing something, it's about feeling everything that you can feel without the obstacle of the mind. Yes, life is short, and if you learn how to make a meditation out of it then you won't miss out on anything. That's why you don't have to put yourself in a cave. 

[Ishanga]

18 minutes ago, manuel bon said:

Nobody is telling you that you should meditate 5-10 hours a day. That's precisely why Osho says to live in meditation, so you can enjoy life more. Meditation is not about doing something, it's about feeling everything that you can feel without the obstacle of the mind. Yes, life is short, and if you learn how to make a meditation out of it then you won't miss out on anything. That's why you don't have to put yourself in a cave. 

Its about being "Meditative", not performing a technique 24/7, this is the problem with applying Intellect to a non intellect aspect of Life we call Spirituality!

[manuel bon]

7 minutes ago, Ishanga said:

Its about being "Meditative", not performing a technique 24/7, this is the problem with applying Intellect to a non intellect aspect of Life we call Spirituality!

At the end these teachings tell us that we should simply become consciousness, which means going beyond the mind. At the beginning applying these techniques 24/7 help us so that with practice they will become automatic and there's no intellect, and therefore you become automatic. If it would be so easy to be meditative without the techniques then why aren't we all meditative already?

[r0ckyreed]

I don’t think you guys are quite understanding what I’m trying to point to. If everything can be meditative, then why would you need to sit for 1 hour a day when you could go outside and garden or go for an hour run and have that same meditative state? That routine of meditating an hour a day becomes too much. If anything, 5-10 minutes of formal meditation is enough. Right now I’m on a serene walk through the woods. The issue is trying to define meditation as only one thing such as sitting down eyes closed and chanting. This is not meditative for everyone. I have too much curiosity and ambition to confine my mind with this practice of 5 hours a day. If you really want amazing results with meditation, you need to go at it all the way. Doing 5-10 minutes or an hour a day will only get you so far. It’s not a worthwhile investment for me to devote 5 hours a day and let only 1 hour.

[Ishanga]

8 minutes ago, manuel bon said:

At the end these teachings tell us that we should simply become consciousness, which means going beyond the mind. At the beginning applying these techniques 24/7 help us so that with practice they will become automatic and there's no intellect, and therefore you become automatic. If it would be so easy to be meditative without the techniques then why aren't we all meditative already?

Yes its about raising the Individuals Consciousness.. What I mean by technique is the sitting and eyes closed stuff, that cannot be done 24/7 by a Householder type person that is out in the world with family and work life... They other things are more of an Internal Awareness that Life is found in this Moment, not the past or future memory/imagination matrix, and that I can choose how to Respond to Situations rather than being Reactive and things of this nature, it reduces the stress response, so that no stress is present in life, from that naturally Ease comes into Your Experience, Life becomes effortless and flowing, Your not lazy in life, Your very active and full of energy and vitality, but no stress is felt, now Your more enabled to experience Higher Consciousness, the techniques are mostly used in the beginning to get things going, to revitalize the Energy system, calm down the nervous system, bring things to ease and balance..

Edited September 1 by Ishanga

[r0ckyreed]

We already are consciousness. You can’t just live life sitting on a cushion. You need to be active and ambitious. You have to contemplate and have a vision for the future while also appreciating the present moment.

The only meditation practice I do is visualization/LoA.

I would say contemplation is meditation, but the way meditation is talked about is the opposite of contemplation. Contemplation is about deeply thinking about reality whereas meditation is quieting the mind. Quieting the mind is good in moderation, but you have to use your mind.

Edited September 1 by r0ckyreed

[Ishanga]

2 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

I don’t think you guys are quite understanding what I’m trying to point to. If everything can be meditative, then why would you need to sit for 1 hour a day when you could go outside and garden or go for an hour run and have that same meditative state? That routine of meditating an hour a day becomes too much. If anything, 5-10 minutes of formal meditation is enough. Right now I’m on a serene walk through the woods. The issue is trying to define meditation as only one thing such as sitting down eyes closed and chanting. This is not meditative for everyone. I have too much curiosity and ambition to confine my mind with this practice of 5 hours a day. If you really want amazing results with meditation, you need to go at it all the way. Doing 5-10 minutes or an hour a day will only get you so far. It’s not a worthwhile investment for me to devote 5 hours a day and let only 1 hour.

Its simple, Spiritual Sadhana is specific, going out in nature is general, both are used for certain things, if You want to go beyond Survival Level of Awareness, have more Possibility and Potential exposed to You in Your Life, then You have to do Specific Spiritual Sadhana like Kriya Yoga, but if you just want general Wellbeing, take walks in a nice park or the woods, be active, eat right and avoid stressful situations and You will have some general level of Wellbeing!