Philosophies of Eastern Religion/Meditation

[KichigaiNeko]

I think that we all take some time to be quiet, even if it is sitting I front of the TV.

I like "meditation" .... For me it is just letting my mind wander all over the place like a young colt until it gets bored, fun to watch what your mind actually does. It eventually settles down and is still (well, as still as I can get to atm).

Funny, my children would call my lame attempts at yoga "Mum's Yoghurt". I like stretching my body, good also for warm up/ down exercises before and after heavy activity.

That's about it for me, the rest of the mumbo jumbo is interesting but I find unhelpful.

@ShaMan... For some people, "yoghurt is the only culture they will ever have." (No inference to any of the previous post) But SOME of my neighbours! Damn!

[Angrboda]

Meditation has entered the mainstream of health care as a method of stress and pain reduction.

A wider, more flexible attention span makes it easier to be aware of a situation, easier to be objective in emotionally or morally difficult situations, and easier to achieve a state of responsive, creative awareness or "flow".

This is a claim. None of what you've presented is evidence for it.

If meditation is simply a technique for reducing stress, it has stiff competition from exercise, good sleep, and the occasional glass of wine. Meditation has been correlated with many changes in the brain, yet so far, there is no understanding of what these changes actually mean. They could be signs of changes leading to enhancement of cognitive function, or they could simply be change for change's sake. We simply don't know.

Dr. James Austin, a neurophysiologist at the University of Colorado, reported that meditation in Zen "rewires the circuitry" of the brain in his book Zen and the Brain (Austin, 1999).

Austin says a lot of things in his book, most of which are either speculation, exploratory comments, or unsubstantiated assertions. Zen and the Brain is a fascinating volume, but again, it doesn't show anything more conclusively than that changes occur. It doesn't demonstrate any significance to those changes.


I'm as intrigued by meditation as the next person, but at present we don't know enough about its actual effects to tout it as anything more than yet another way to relieve stress.

[Whateverist]

So does or did anyone here belong to Eastern Religion or practice the exercises, meditation, controlled breathing, yoga, interior silence, and stillness etc?

It's hard as hell to do. Ideally one is to learn how have control over the mind to stop it from wandering from thought to thought. One is to control what comes into the mind so that unwanted thoughts no longer can enter. This is to be completely focused without distractions.

It is far simpler to learn to control what you do about it than it is to control what comes into your mind.

[MindForgedManacle]

It is far simpler to learn to control what you do about it than it is to control what comes into your mind.

Goddamn fortune cookie. :p