Zen Buddhism

[account_inactive]

I don't know much about it. I used to know a guy who would talk about it and outer body experiences. Sounded like he had taken a shit ton of drugs, to be honest.

I guess a good amount of acid and exstacy would make one conjure an outer body experience but I wouldn't know. haha 

Haha.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Basically I think the best way of summing up meditation is being in the moment rather than lost in thought. So I think any activity where you're focused on the present moment can be classed as meditation, whether it be the traditional form of focusing on the breath, or just any other mindful activity where you're focused on the what's going on in the present moment... the immediate sensations rather than the past (memories) or the future (feelings of boredom etc - 'I could be doing something else'). For instance lately I've been trying to make my sandwiches mindfully, and that means not rushing to finish it because of a goal in mind (future thinking) but rather just focusing on the immediate sensations involved in the present moment, noticing as much as I can about every aspect of it... how the knife moves, how the butter looks etc... and just trying to let go of any non-present thoughts, labelling them as thinking. And you can do it for anything... walks, having a shower, playing music etc... just notice everything you can in the present moment and try to let go of any thoughts. And recently my therapist gave me another useful little mindfulness exercise which is quick and easy to do and just involves first noticing five things you can see, then five things you can hear, then five things you can feel, and finally trying to notice all of them at the same time.

This is great stuff, and perhaps helps to explain why I view music (when in the right frame of mind) as meditation -- because as a musician, my goal is to let go and not play the music, but rather, to let the music play me. I surrender to the moment.

I am not the guitarist; I am the instrument. Being alive to the sounds reaching my ears, alive to the feel of the strings under my fingers, how the guitar resonates against my chest, and being inside the flow -- and most importantly, getting my ego out of the way -- centers me.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Mindfulness is something I practice in everyday life as part of my recovery from alcoholism ... when I find myself with a bad flow of emotions, I start observing the flow, chase it upstream until I find the problem, and then address it so that my day doesn't go to shit and trigger a drinking urge.

I don't formally meditate, but often playing my guitar induces a similar mental state.

Funny how when something someone has written inspires and prompts me to write something in turn is precisely the times when I'm most likely to forget to kudos the inspiring post.  Omission fixed.

That's because you're in the moment.

It ain't so much funny as it is real, brotha. Keep it real, the kudos aren't an omission, they're icing. The feelings are the real deal.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I get into a "mindful" zone when I'm playing violin. Maybe it's meditation but I don't think of it that way. When I hear people talking about meditation, even Zen Buddhism-type meditation, it usually veers into a conversation spirituality or religion.

Don't have to call it meditation...maybe mindfulness? I used to play the piano regularly and found that often when i played all things disappeared and all my mental faculties were focused on one thing: piano. By definition, from what I understand, this could also be considered mindfulness.

To me, mindfulness and meditation are two different things. The first is the act of observing the mental experience from a point of heightened objectivity; the latter is letting go of personal experience for a bit. They're related, no argument there. My opinion only, of course.

[Gemini]

My personal view of meditation is that it differs from simple mindfulness.  Mindfulness in ordinary activities does little to restructure the way our brains process information.  In ordinary consciousness, the different centers of thought in our brain compete for overall attention, firing off largely unrestricted.  My view is that in intense meditation, the brain is learning to focus activity in a few select portions of the brain.  It is a form of training our mind how to do that.  Once the skill is acquired through intense meditation, it can be harnessed in less rigorous circumstances.  Mindfulness to me is like meditation lite -- it can alter the way the brain processes things for that short time period, but does little to retrain the mind overall. (in my opinion)  So in my view there is a reason for the rigors of practice which are not met by simply trying to live mindfully.

The way I think of it is that what we call "consciousness" is a specific kind of complex experience: consciousness of consciousness. The neural correlate would presumably be the pre-frontal lobes, monitoring various other areas of the brain. 

My experience of meditation is that when I get out of the well-worn connections that I spend most of my time in, I can see that there's a great deal going on in my mind that goes unnoticed by this meta-consciousness or self-consciousness. I'm experiencing it, but the nature of the experience is too simple to form thoughts like, "I'm experiencing such and such." It's like you said--different centers of thought in the brain competing for overall attention, without any kind of logical or rational oversight. It's a messy, winner-take-all process. 

I'm guessing meditation is a way of forming new connections between the pre-frontal lobes and other areas of the brain, allowing you to be more selective in your decision making processes.

And then there's a whole other aspect to meditation, where you get really fine-grained and analyze things like how the mind constructs our experience of space. Once you see how some of our most basic and seemingly nonanalyzable concepts and intuitions are metal constructs that break down into smaller components, I don't think you can help but be skeptical of metaphysics that rests on a priori reason.

[brewer]

Sounds like you got something there. So this "mindfulness" is a part of CBT, cognitive restructuring, socratic questioning, .............. I'm a fan! Also an addict.

I haven't forgotten our PMs, just been a pretty hectic couple of weeks. Perhaps this next week?

No worries. Life happens away from AF.

[emjay]

Interesting.  But I think mindfulness is something to be brought into as much of your life as possible .. cooking, walking, whatever.  I think of it as being in a receptive/noticing state rather than a directed/expressing state.  The idea of doing specific repetitive but essentially meaningless motions (or no motion) in order to achieve an effect seems kind of desperate.  Or like going on a short term diet to lose weight.  Much better to just change the way you eat or live.  Or maybe I'm just covering up for lack of discipline?

My personal view of meditation is that it differs from simple mindfulness.  Mindfulness in ordinary activities does little to restructure the way our brains process information.  In ordinary consciousness, the different centers of thought in our brain compete for overall attention, firing off largely unrestricted.  My view is that in intense meditation, the brain is learning to focus activity in a few select portions of the brain.  It is a form of training our mind how to do that.  Once the skill is acquired through intense meditation, it can be harnessed in less rigorous circumstances.  Mindfulness to me is like meditation lite -- it can alter the way the brain processes things for that short time period, but does little to retrain the mind overall. (in my opinion)  So in my view there is a reason for the rigors of practice which are not met by simply trying to live mindfully.

I totally agree that proper, long-term, trained meditation is different from meditation lite... especially after I learned recently that it causes structural/connectivity changes in the brain. I think that's wonderful news for neuroscience because I think it will help reveal the nature of focus/attention once that structural/connectivity change is fully mapped/understood. I don't know anything about it yet... I haven't looked into it at all, but I was just so excited by the mere fact that it does cause physical changes, because that opens it up to examination and scrutiny, similar to how brain damage helps reveal what's missing.

[robvalue]

I do mindfulness as a way of relaxing myself.

[Whateverist]

Funny how when something someone has written inspires and prompts me to write something in turn is precisely the times when I'm most likely to forget to kudos the inspiring post.  Omission fixed.

That's because you're in the moment.

It ain't so much funny as it is real, brotha. Keep it real, the kudos aren't an omission, they're icing. The feelings are the real deal.

Hear that suckas?  It is my moment.  You can stay but there will be a charge.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Hear that suckas?  It is my moment.  You can stay but there will be a charge.

Settle down, Gramps, I said you're in the moment, not you own the moment.

On a related note, might be time to check the batteries in your hearing aid.