Meditation is a thing that you do with your attention. When you pay attention or concentrate or get distracted, that’s you doing a thing with your attention. And that’s obviously important stuff in your life and the world. Meditation takes it further.
We basically have 2 kinds of meditation.
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Concentration meditation, which is plain ol concentration taken to a higher level.
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Zen meditation (aka shikantaza), which is another thing to do with your attention, kindof a left turn from concentration and is a bit esoteric.
So there you go.
Have you ever done group/collective transcendental meditation? From my limited lack of knowledge, I understand it is used to push positive social waves into the surrounding community. Big David Lynch fan.
I feel like I’ve had undiagnosed ADHD my whole life. I’ve done some meditation in the past and I felt it helped a bit but it’s been years.
Any advice that you’d give me? Anything you’d like to mention about the benefits?
So can you meditate at will? I usually don’t say I meditate as try to meditate because that is what I am doing. Sometimes I feel I get to a state which is illusive and maybe what I am looking to get to when I try to meditate but im not sure if that is meditation either.
Yeah, I can meditate at will. I slide in. Starts shallow, gets deeper. The longer I go the deeper it gets. Then when I’m done I slide out again over hours and days. Ideally I’d do it 24-7 but there you go.
It’s like my hand is chronically in a tight fist. When I meditate it relaxes and opens up and gets relaxed and floppy.
That’s shikantaza anyway. The other kind of meditation, the concentration, it sorta makes me tighter. But I don’t do that meditation these days.
How would you say this has affected your life?
Positively
How do you not fall asleep?
I don’t know. It never became an issue.
So, do you have a more-experienced meditator that you meet with regularly, or do you meditate on your own?
I meditate on my own
Is there a principled reason why you do not consult with other meditators, or did it just work out that way?
No principal involved. The way I see it, I have this thing before me and addressing it seems to be a personal one-man job. So ya, I never felt drawn to consulting like that. But when I find somebody else who meditates I do like to talk to them. Sometimes intensely.
That makes sense. There’s been an enormous amount of meditation work done over the centuries, in the Euro-American world we tend to be unaware of it. I kinda feel like I should encourage you to seek out meditation centers and temples. But if what you’re doing works for you, then awesome.
no question, just one single clap
Have you ever had any dissociation events? Like, feeling that you are a passenger in your own body, after meditation?
Ya, I’ve felt like that. Not in a way that was associated with or caused by meditation, as far as I can tell, tho.
What’s the longest you’ve ever gone in a completely thoughtless state?
I guess 15 minutes. Maybe 60. Time kinda gets away from me sometimes.
There’s always idea-stuff flowing by. Like, I dunno, snow falling. It’s whether I react to it that makes it into thinking, basically. When I don’t interact with it by reacting to it by moving my attention and such it isn’t really thinking anymore. It’s like snow.
There is no good definition of a thought.
But as a person who struggles to crack 60 seconds, respect.
Thanks. Keep in mind that that’s the rare best-case scenario. My daily best is more like 5 minutes.
Getting my life to where that best-case scenario happens more often is a big deal for me. I work on that.
