Philosophies of Eastern Religion/Meditation

[Phatt Matt s]

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. This will improve a persons performance in all areas of life if the mind is not distracted and thinking about two or more things at once. If you chase after two rabbits at the same time you have a slim chance of catching either.

It strengthens certain areas of the brain, can lead to better sleep, better heart rate, blood-pressure, less anxiety, more clarity, more energy, and in some cases creativity, insight, or Euphoria.

The chattering mind burns up much energy and leads to mental blind spots.

When one successfully stops thought for long periods of time you move beyond the awareness of this world and some of the thinking errors become less severe, exposed, or eliminated.

It might not sound like much,but in achieving the inner stillness that is free of conscious thought, I felt truly free. A freedom to have happiness that wasn't shaken by external circumstances. It came with more mindfulness throughout the day, less worry, and being less bothered by the typical disappointments and frustration of day to day living. I Wasn't able to maintain it however due to neglect of the disciplines required to advance.

If you would like to share something about any experience you may have had with Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism that would be great.

There is wisdom in all of them.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Rasetsu claims to be a Hindu.

[Phatt Matt s]

Yeah,
She's an enigma!

[ShaMan]

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

I make space each and every day to quiet and still my mind. The practice belongs to the Human race, and it has been around for much longer than any religion, Eastern or otherwise. Let no religion claim what naturally belongs to all of Mankind.

It's hard as hell to do.

It's all about not trying

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If you would like to share something about any experience you may have had with Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism that would be great.

My experience with these religions is much the same as with western religions: I find them to be over-loaded with self-righteous, sanctimonious hypocrites who know fuck-all about how the real world works and have the balls to be smug about it.

I'm constantly mystified (no pun intended) by atheists who are rabidly anti-JudeoChristian, but want to give the eastern rubbish a pass.

That being said, I am somewhat fond of yoga, especially the kind in the little cups with fruit at the bottom.

Boru

[ShaMan]

That being said, I am somewhat fond of yoga, especially the kind in the little cups with fruit at the bottom.

Boru

A real cultural guy...

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

That being said, I am somewhat fond of yoga, especially the kind in the little cups with fruit at the bottom.

Boru

A real cultural guy...

A real judgmental guy...

Thank you SO much for proving my point.

Boru

[ShaMan]

A real cultural guy...

A real judgmental guy...

I trust you apprehended my inference to yogurt containing cultures? If not then perhaps you need some granola to accompany your yoga

Golly gee, I hope that didn't sound too smug or sanctimonious

[Minimalist]

I always find it amusing that Hindus bathe in the Ganges to "purify" themselves....the river is basically an open-pit cesspool.

[Phatt Matt s]

Research on the processes and effects of meditation is a growing subfield of neurological research. Modern scientific techniques and instruments, such as fMRI and EEG, have been used to see what happens in the body of people when they meditate, and how their bodies and brain change after meditating regularly.

The relaxation response includes changes in metabolism, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and brain chemistry. Benson and his team have also done clinical studies at Buddhist monasteries in the Himalayan Mountains. Benson wrote The Relaxation Response to document the benefits of meditation, which in 1975 were not yet widely known

According to a March 2006 article in Psychological Bulletin, EEG activity begins to slow as a result of the practice of meditation. The human nervous system is composed of a parasympathetic system, which works to regulate heart rate, breathing and other involuntary motor functions, and a sympathetic system, which arouses the body, preparing it for vigorous activity.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has written, "It is thought that some types of meditation might work by reducing activity in the sympathetic nervous system and increasing activity in the parasympathetic nervous system," or equivalently, that meditation produces a reduction in arousal and increase in relaxation.

Meditation has entered the mainstream of health care as a method of stress and pain reduction. As a method of stress reduction, meditation has been used in hospitals in cases of chronic or terminal illness to reduce complications associated with increased stress that include depressed immune systems.

There is growing agreement in the medical community that mental factors such as stress significantly contribute to a lack of physical health, and there is a growing movement in mainstream science to fund research in this area. There are now several mainstream health care programs which aid those, both sick and healthy, in promoting their inner well-being, especially mindfulness-based programs such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).

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". Research from Harvard medical school also shows that during meditation, physiological signals show that there is a decrease in respiration and increase in heart rate and blood oxygen saturation levels.

A study done by Yale, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital have shown that meditation increases gray matter in specific regions of the brain and may slow the deterioration of the brain as a part of the natural aging process.

The experiment included 20 individuals with intensive Buddhist "insight meditation" training and 15 who did not meditate. The brain scan revealed that those who meditated have an increased thickness of gray matter in parts of the brain that are responsible for attention and processing sensory input.

Some of the participants meditated for 40 minutes a day while others had been doing it for years. The results showed that the change in brain thickness depended upon the amount of time spent in meditation. The increase in thickness ranged between .004 and .008 inches (0.1016mm – 0.2032mm).

A study involving the participation of a group of college students, who were asked to use a meditation technique called integrative body-mind training (IBMT involves body relaxation, mental imagery, and mindfulness training), concluded that "meditating may improve the integrity and efficiency of certain connections in the brain" through an increase in their number and robustness Brain scans showed strong white matter changes in the anterior cingulate cortex. (whatever the FUCK that is)

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). This has been confirmed using functional MRI imaging, a brain scanning technique that measures blood flow in the brain.

Fifteen Carmelite nuns came from the monastery to the laboratory to enter a fMRI machine whilst meditating, allowing scientists there to scan their brains using fMRI while they were in a state known as Unio Mystica (and also Theoria). The results showed that far-flung parts of the brain were recruited in the sustaining of this mystical union with God. The documentary film Mystical Brain by Isabelle Raynauld examined this study.

Electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings of skilled meditators showed a significant rise in gamma wave activity during meditation, somewhere in the 80 to 120 Hz range. There was also a rise in the range of 25 to 42 Hz. These meditators had 10 to 40 years of training in compassion meditation training and were engaging in non-referential compassion meditation during the study.

The experienced meditators also showed increased gamma activity while at rest and not meditating. Several controls who hadn't practiced meditation before were compared to the highly trained monks and showed significantly less rise in gamma activity during meditation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation

Also, studies show that meditation can increase the likelihoood of evolution creating positive mutations in prepubescent rodents.