Overall, I consider my study of meditation to be quite successful. In several ways, I have accomplished my goal of living more mindfully in daily life. I completed Sam Harris's 30-day beginner meditation course, and I do a 10 or 20 minute guided meditation on Sam's app Waking Up most mornings. These guided meditations are a mix of Vipassana, Dzogchen, and Metta, so I consistently practice several forms of meditation to develop various types of mindfulness. Additionally, I read Sam's book Waking Up, through which I learned about many interesting applications of mindfulness to daily life, such as interacting with strangers. I also read William B Irvine's introductory book on Stoicism, and I regularly apply the stoic principles of negative visualization, the trichotomy of control, a mindset of fatalism with respect to the past, and self-deprivation. These Stoic techniques have helped me live more mindfully because they help me be aware of my tendency to take for granted the good things in my life, and these techniques help me mindfully appreciate what I have. I have explored both the subjective experience and scientific logic of questioning free will, which has made me more mindful about the way in which I think and make decisions. Finally, I have investigated some downsides of meditation, which has helped me strike an appropriate balance between various more- and less- meditative states of mind as I go through life. I plan to continue doing guided meditations on the Waking Up app for the foreseeable future, and I may well meditate for the rest of my life.
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This week, in addition to my regular practice, I listened to a fascinating podcast in which Sam Harris interviewed a pair of researchers who study ways in which people can be harmed by meditation. Sam Harris is an enthusiastic proponent of meditation for almost everyone who isn't suffering from a psychological disorder like schizophrenia, so hearing an alternative perspective on the utility of meditation was interesting and deepened my understanding of the potential effects of meditation.
The type of meditation that the researchers focused on critiquing was the same type of meditation that Sam focuses on teaching in his app: Dzogchen self-dissolving meditation. One problem the researchers studied was that some people who regularly practice Dzogchen report feeling like they are unable to experience any emotions at all, and everything that happens to them feels almost like it's happening to someone else. This is understandable, because Dzogchen is all about recognizing thoughts as transient appearances in consciousness rather than as parts of ourselves. Experiencing thoughts in this manner tends to lessen their power over us. Although this perspective can be useful in preventing negative thoughts from affecting us, this perspective can also prevent positive thoughts from affecting us as much as we may like. The key to success with Dzogchen seems to be able to move in and out of a state of selflessness at will, rather than get permanently stuck in a state of selflessness. The researchers also mentioned that meditation can be harmful when people become distressed upon experiencing a subjective sense of having no free will. Experiencing a lack of free will is a common sensation during Dzogchen; once we recognize that all thoughts are appearances in consciousness, it becomes difficult to feel like a agent that is choosing to desire to do certain things. The remedy for this problem, I believe, is to recognize that the fact that we lack free will does not mean our choices do not matter. Whether or not we have free will, the actions that we choose to take will have significant impact on our lives. Meditation can help us develop the willpower to make decisions that our rational minds identify as optimal. This week, in addition to my regular meditation practice, I listened to a fascinating series of podcasts on free will by Sam Harris. In these podcasts, Sam made the case that free will is not only an illusion, but that it is also possible to subjectively experience our lack of free will through meditation. This sounds like a rather arcane proposition, but I find his reasoning persuasive, and I will attempt to summarize his argument here.
First, we must briefly define free will. Although surprisingly difficult to define, free will is often seen as the ability to make our own decisions, independent of deterministic outside influences. It is often easier to define the converse of free will, which is determinism. Determinism is a proposed state of the universe in which all events arise as a result of previous events. Determinism is diametrically opposed to free will. Free will would require there to be some mechanism by which conscious beings can overcome deterministic laws to arrive at actions that are truly their own. To demonstrate that free will does not exist, it should be sufficient to demonstrate that we could never have made a different decision if time in the universe were reversed and we were returned to a state of being in which all molecules in the universe were in exactly the same relation to each other. Through Dzogchen practice, it is possible to experience that all thoughts and sensations are simply appearances in consciousness. But even if you haven't practiced Dzogchen, this is still easy to understand at an intellectual level: how could we have any evidence of something if it weren't an appearance in consciousness? Again, this is not a claim that no objects exist outside of consciousness, but rather that the entirety of our evidence of these objects comes exclusively through appearances in consciousness, such as sights or sounds. Just like data from senses, thoughts–both voluntary and involuntary–are appearances in consciousness as well. Just as we do not generate the sense-data that appears in our consciousness, we do not generate our thoughts. Our thoughts merely appear in patterns, often predictable patterns. This fact about our thoughts becomes relevant when we analyze the experience behind making simple decisions. Here is a simple decision to make: think of a movie. Any movie at all. You have complete "freedom" to make this decision. However, when you look back at the process of deciding which movie to think of, you will notice that certain things undoubtedly influenced which movie you thought of. These influences could include your surroundings, how recently you have watched various movies, or who you have recently discussed movies with. Given exactly the same circumstances, you would have thought of the same movie every time. You certainly would not have thought of, say, The Wizard of Oz, if you did not already. Even if this experiment were run billions of times, given the same initial conditions, you never would have thought of The Wizard of Oz. Even though you may feel that you could have chosen any movie at all, you were not really free to choose The Wizard of Oz. You were not truly "free" to choose at all. This argument is applicable to any choice we ever make. Although an argument for a lack of free will may sound scary, there is at least one major positive effect that accepting that people lack free will can have: a lack of free will removes the basis for hating people based on their actions. The irrelevance of hate can free us to focus on truly effective punishment for crime, rather than punishment for crime that satisfies our hunger for retribution. This philosophical concept deeply intersects with both Dzogchen self-dissolving meditation and Metta loving kindness meditation. I am still not sure if I agree with Sam's entire argument, but it is certainly interesting, and it has given me a lot to think about. I will continue my daily meditation practice this week, and I plan to listen to a series of Sam Harris's meditation podcasts about intersections of Metta loving kindness meditation with the effective altruism movement. I finished William B. Irvine's book this week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Among other topics, two of the things I found most interesting this week were the practice of seeing the past fatalistically and the practice of self-deprivation, both of which I mentioned last week. I'll discuss what I learned about each of these practices.
Fatalism about the past is simply recognizing that the past cannot be changed and adopting habits of mind that reflect this recognition. One such habit of mind that intersects with the things I'm practicing on Sam's app is using Dzogchen or Vipassana techniques to let unproductive rumination pass out of the mind when I recognize such thoughts. I've found the philosophy of Stoicism useful in recognizing these thoughts and in directing me to apply the meditation techniques that I'm practicing. Another good habit of mind that comes from a fatalistic view of the past is milking the past for lessons rather than regretting the past. When learning from my past, I've found it helpful to sometimes look at the past as if I were looking at another person's life, rather than my own. This practice helps me avoid judging my past self and also helps me avoid letting negative emotions get in the way of the learning process. This practice, too, intersects with the dissolution of the self practiced in Dzogchen: if my sense of self in each moment is illusory, then certainly my sense that I am the same person I was in the past is also illusory. This realization liberates me to learn freely from my past without getting emotionally bogged down by it, allowing me to direct my attention towards actions I can take in the present. Practicing fatalism about the past reminds me of a tremendously useful guideline in chess. Each move should be treated as its own situation, independent of any other. If an unexpected good move becomes clear to me or a mistake I recently made becomes evident, I should do everything I can to capitalize on the good move or ameliorate my mistake, regardless of my past plan. Just because I have already invested time and mental effort into a past plan does not mean I should stick with that plan. In economics, the mindset I have adopted is referred to as the resolution of the "sunk cost fallacy." The final major Stoic technique I learned about was self-deprivation. Self-deprivation is the process of deliberately depriving myself of certain comforts for a short period of time. This practice has two main purposes: to appreciate these comforts more fully when I return to them, and to prepare for the possibility of someday losing them to become less dependent on them. Self-deprivation can be thought of as a kind of lived negative visualization. One self-deprivation technique I've been using has been finishing all of my showers with maximally cold water to deprive myself of heat in the shower for a brief period of time. I've noticed that I enjoy the hot part of my showers even more now, which fulfills the goal of appreciating normal comforts even more. Additionally, I've noticed myself getting used to the cold part of my showers, which fulfills the goal of preparing for a time when I don't have access to the comfort of heat. Now I know that if I ever go to a camp where only cold water is available to shower in, I will be much more prepared than I would have been if I had never taken cold showers! Yet again, I have noticed that Dzogchen techniques are unexpectedly broadly applicable–this time, to self-deprivation. When I'm standing under the cold water, I find it useful to dissolve my sense of self and recognize the sensations of cold on my body as patterns of perception, rather than as painful nuisances. I recently listened to one of Sam Harris's podcasts in which he briefly discusses the rational validity of the concept of free will. He does not believe that free will exists, which is a position I also hold, but he goes one step further: that it is possible to subjectively experience our lack of free will through meditation. He has a series of in-depth podcasts on this topic, which I will listen to this week and write about next week. Besides daily meditations on Sam Harris's app, my main activity for this week was starting to read William B Irvine's book A Guide to the Good Life, which is a basic course on the Greek and Roman philosophy of Stoicism. The goal of Stoicism is to alleviate unnecessary suffering through changing the way we behave and think about our lives. While there are many Stoic techniques available to learn, this book focused on four: negative visualization, the trichotomy of control, fatalism about the past, and self-deprivation. So far, I've learned about negative visualization and the trichotomy of control, both of which I will discuss here.
The first technique the book discussed was negative visualization. Negative visualization is the process of imagining losing something that brings you happiness, or imagining any event occurring that you would find upsetting. For instance, one negative visualization exercise I've frequently done when I feel nervous about college decisions is to imagine that I didn't get into any colleges (which didn't happen). In fact, I can imagine that I don't even live in an environment where anybody has the resources to go to college. Then, when I'm done with my negative visualization, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude that I'm fortunate enough to be in the position I'm in, where I already have several college acceptances that I'm very happy about. While it may initially sound counterintuitive that thinking about things going wrong could make me happier, I find that negative visualization is an excellent way to cultivate gratitude. Negative visualization is an excellent way to defeat the hedonic treadmill effect, because it allows us to simulate the feeling of getting something we want over and over again each time we end our visualization. Furthermore, imagining things going wrong prepares us for the moments during which things actually do go wrong. Because we've already thought about what it would be like if these bad things happened, we may respond with less debilitating shock when such things pass in real life. The trichotomy of control is the philosophy of separating all events in life into three categories: that which we have no control over, that which we have partial control over, and that which we have no control over. Things that we have no control over are pointless to worry about, so it makes sense not to dwell on such things and to use techniques such as Dzogchen meditation to let stress associated with things pass over us. Things that we have partial control over have multiple components, which can be divided into things that we have no control over and things which we have complete control over. For instance, if I want to do well on a test, this task entails both things I have no control over (such as whether the questions on the test are those for which I've prepared) and also things I have complete control over (such as how effectively I study). By not worrying at all about components I have no control over, I free attention and energy to focus on more productive things. In general, we should spend our mental energy almost entirely on things over which we have complete control, rather than things over which we have no control. This may sound like an obvious statement, but keeping the trichotomy of control in mind throughout daily life makes this statement much easier to apply. This week, I will continue my daily meditations on Sam's app, and I also plan to finish William B Irvine's book. I finished Sam's book Waking Up this week, and I found it fascinating. One of the most interesting things that the book discussed was the applications of a feeling of Dzogchen-based selflessness to social interactions. While it might appear the dissolving the feeling of a sense of self would be detrimental to interacting with people, feeling selfless can have several interesting positive effects. For instance, a feeling of selflessness can lower unnecessary social inhibitions. Focusing on noticing thoughts and sensations for what they are without judging them tends to make us less self-conscious, which can help us immerse ourselves more fully in the present. Additionally, a feeling of selflessness can help us overcome the desire to distract ourselves in the middle of a conversation by reaching for a phone. If we can recognize that the urge to check our phone is simply an appearance in consciousness, rather than as an element of the self, we can let this sensation pass over us more easily. Overall, the ability to go into a state of mind in which we feel like a self separate from the rest of the world can make it much easier for us to have spontaneous social interactions with anyone, including strangers.
Another thing I realized after reading Sam's book is that it is impossible to be truly bored if you have achieved a high level of vipassana-like practice. Vipassana is all about becoming fascinated by and enthralled by your own breath to the point at which you are focused on nothing else. If you hone the ability to become intensely concentrated on something as mundane as the breath, then it isn't difficult to become interested in absolutely anything, from the feeling of your body in the chair to the surrounding walls and furniture. This boredom-eliminating effect of Vipassana is much like the concentration-boosting effect of Vipassana that I discussed earlier. In addition, I learned from Sam's book that Dzogchen can also be helpful in eliminating boredom, because Dzogchen practice allows us to recognize feelings of boredom as yet another appearance in consciousness, rather than a part of ourselves. Besides finishing Sam's book, I listened to one of Sam's podcasts about the science of happiness, and I found some of the social applications of Dzogchen practice relevant to what his guest was discussing on the podcast. On the podcast, Sam's guest discussed the fact that even small social interactions with strangers, such as the barista at a coffee shop, can go a long way in the aggregate towards increasing our general sense of well-being. Such social interactions are difficult to have in any meaningful way if we are too self-conscious to go out of our way and talk to people more than we need to, and this is something that Dzogchen practice can help with. If a Dzogchen practitioner identifies a situation during which it would be beneficial to talk with a stranger, but they are feeling self-conscious, they can immediately go into a state of selflessness and likely break down their own inhibitions enough to talk to the person. On the podcast episode I listened to, I learned about a book that I should read: William B. Irvine's A Guide to the Good Life. The book is a brief introduction to the ancient Roman and Greek philosophy of stoicism, which is highly compatible with meditation. This week, I'll continue practicing daily meditations on Sam Harris's app Waking Up and read William B. Irvine's book. In addition to continuing to practice Vipassana-based and Dzogchen-based practice, I learned a new type of meditation this week: loving kindness meditation, based on the Buddhist tradition of Metta. The purpose of this meditation is to nurture feelings of goodwill and happiness first towards a specific person, and eventually towards all of humanity (or even all living things). I had heard of loving kindness meditation before this week, but this is the first time I've ever tried it for myself.
I begin the practice by focusing on my breath for a few moments to steady my attention, as I would in Vipassana-based practice. I then bring to mind a person in my life whom I have positive feelings toward. For a beginner like myself, it's wise to avoid bringing to mind someone with whom I'm romantically involved, because it's easy to accidentally conflate feelings of romantic attachment with the feelings of loving kindness that this meditation is meant to nurture. Some people I chose to bring to mind this week included teachers I especially like and friends of mine. Once the person is clearly in my mind, I mentally say things like "may you be happy" and "may you be free from suffering," directed towards this person. This may sound contrived, but by focusing on the true meaning of these words, it's possible to generate a remarkable level of passion for the person's well-being. Another useful technique to generate this feeling of loving kindness is to picture the person radiantly happy, completely free from suffering and enjoying each moment of their life. I continue these visualizations for an extended period of time, nurturing the goodwill they produce. After building up a strong feeling of loving kindness, a useful extension of this practice is to switch the person in my mind to someone whom I dislike. The already established fire of loving kindness that I build by thinking about someone whom I like for several minutes makes it much easier to direct goodwill towards people I don't like. After practicing for a few days and becoming familiar with the unique feeling of loving kindness, I also tried directing these thoughts towards the person I'm romantically involved with, and I found it very interesting to isolate a new kind of love for this person, one which was a bit different from romantic love. Although I don't believe that my goodwill alone has any metaphysical effects on the people I think about, I do believe that nurturing feelings of goodwill towards people has the power to shape my own behavior in ways that will positively influence others. I think I'm taking advantage of my neural plasticity by engaging in loving kindness meditation: the more I nurture strong feelings of love toward others, the more readily such feelings will appear and be maintained in daily life. Having such feelings of unconditional love towards others makes irrelevant a variety of negative emotions such as jealousy. It looks like I'll finish Sam Harris's book this week, and I look forward to writing next week about miscellaneous insights I have obtained from the book! I have noticed that many things I'm learning from his book are more salient as a result of my meditation practice. I'm almost done with Sam Harris's beginner meditation course, so I'll settle into doing his daily meditations in the next week or two. This week, the meditations I did as part of Sam Harris's course began to transition to a different type of meditation, based on the tradition of dzochen practice in Buddhism. The purpose of this type of meditation is to investigate, and eventually dissolve, the illusion that you are a "self" that is separate from the rest of the world. Although this initially sounds like a faith-based proposition, dzogchen meditation shows that this state of consciousness is always possible to experience subjectively.
This type of meditation usually begins by focusing on a specific sense. For instance, I may begin by becoming aware of all the sounds in my environment, simply noticing everything I hear without judging it. After I'm comfortably focused on these sounds, I take the crucial step: I try to identify that which is hearing. Is there a "hearer" hearing all these sounds, or are the sounds merely appearing in consciousness? Before long, it becomes clear that there is in fact no "hearer" to identify, and all these sounds are appearances in consciousness. When I began this type of meditation, I initially began to feel my body more strongly when I searched for the hearer, and I assumed that the physical sensation of my body represented the self that was hearing. However, these physical sensations of touch, pressure, and heat/cold are also appearances in consciousness, and they appear in the same space in which sounds appear. Any apparent evidence of a self that is experiencing all these things would by definition have to appear in consciousness to be noticed. Thus, such apparent evidence could appropriately be regarded simply as another appearance in consciousness, rather than evidence of some separate self. This type of meditation reveals that the very concept of a self is somewhat irrational; everything we experience, by way of thought or physical sense, is simply an appearance in consciousness. To be clear, I'm not making the solipsistic claim that my consciousness is all that exists, or the absurd claim that the physical body is an allusion. I am merely noticing that as a matter of experience, the concept of a self is something our brains assemble rather than something that objectively exists. The idea of a self, I am discovering, is a model. In many cases, it is a very useful model: if something is rapidly moving towards that which I feel is myself, I would do well to move out of the way lest I get hit. However, the ability to recognize the illusory nature of the self is tremendously useful in avoiding negative states of mind. If I notice a sense of anger arising, for instance, I can step back from my sense of self and simply feel the sensation as a pattern of energy appearing in consciousness. This alternate view of anger–or any negative emotion–allows the emotion to pass much more rapidly than it would if I were personally identified with it. Additionally, experiencing the emotion as an appearance in consciousness rather than as something I generated allows me to avoid letting the emotion color my decision-making abilities. I am over halfway done with Sam Harris's book, and I will write about my thoughts on the book a few weeks from now when I finish it. This week, I will continue reading the book and doing daily meditations, progressing through Sam Harris's beginner course. This week, my meditation has consisted primarily of breath-focus meditation based on the Buddhist tradition of Vipassana. Vipassana is what most people think of when they think of traditional meditation. The goal of Vipassana is to keep your attention completely focused on the breath. When your attention inevitably strays from the breath, you gently bring your attention back to your breath. You repeat this process for as long as you wish. I started with just 5 minutes or so per day of Vipassana, but I've gradually built up to sessions that last between 10 and 20 minutes.
Although this practice sounds simple, it trains several psychological capabilities that are useful in countless circumstances. Keeping my attention focused exclusively on the breath trains my ability to concentrate on an arbitrary thing for an extended period of time. This ability becomes useful when I begin to do intellectual work. When learning new math, for instance, I often find it useful to go into a Vipassana-like zone in which the object of my meditation is the math I'm learning, rather than my breath. Using my breath to hone my concentration abilities is especially useful because the breath isn't typically seen as inherently interesting (though with proper presence of mind, anything can seem fascinating). If I can spend many minutes concentrating on something as simple as the breath, then concentrating on something I find inherently exciting, such as math, isn't difficult. Another benefit of Vipassana is the process of noticing myself get lost in thought and redirecting my attention to my breath. As a beginner, this happens constantly. I can typically spend between 10 seconds and several minutes focusing on the breath before getting lost in thought. Then, when I notice that I'm no longer focusing on my breath, I gently redirect my attention. Sam Harris has compared this process of redirecting attention to weightlifting for the mind, and I completely agree with this comparison. Each time I redirect my attention is like one rep of an exercise. With practice, I've noticed that redirecting my attention is getting easier and easier. This is also extremely useful when it comes to doing intellectual work. If I get distracted and check my email or look at my phone, I can use the skill I've built through Vipassana to gently direct my attention back to my work. Several meditation teachers whom I'm familiar with refer to this process of redirecting the wandering mind as the most beneficial aspect of meditation for a beginner. Finally, Vipassana practice has helped me notice how I feel when I'm about to get distracted. It's difficult to describe, but I'm discovering that there is a specific, subtle quality of mind associated with incoming distraction. As I get better at identifying this mental "warning state," I can begin to preemptively redirect my attention before I even get fully lost in thought. This week, I'll continue through Sam Harris's month-long beginner meditation course. For my independent health exploration project, I have chosen to focus on meditation. My goal in exploring this topic is to live more mindfully in daily life.
For many years, I've periodically dabbled in meditation. I've read a few books, watched youtube videos, and tried several apps. Each time, I've meditated consistently for several weeks, but I've always lost the habit for around half a year before picking it back up. Most recently, I became interested in meditation after listening to Sam Harris–one of my favorite writers and speakers–discussed meditation on his podcast. Sam has several decades of meditation experience, and he has spent years on intensive retreats studying with meditation teachers. In recent years, he has published educational content on meditation with an unusual goal: to teach a secular practice of meditation that is completely free of all religious dogma, yet is just as profound as the richest religious traditions. Sam occupies a highly unusual niche in our cultural discourse: he is an outspoken atheist and scientifically-minded skeptic, yet he firmly believes in the value of spiritual experience. Most public voices have at most one of these qualities. Some critics of religion, such as Richard Dawkins, make logically persuasive arguments against religion, yet their discussion of spirituality stops at the sort of wonder at the natural world that Einstein and Darwin famously experienced. This wonder is a sublime state of mind, but it only begins to capture the possible range of human experience. In a secular context, mindfulness (being aware of the contents of one's consciousness) is often taught as little more than an "executive stress ball" that we can utilize to become more productive and relieve stress. But mindfulness is far more than a narrowly applicable, pragmatic tool. If implemented properly, it can transform the way one experiences all the contents of consciousness (sensations and thoughts). Yet when one turns to traditional religious techniques to learn about spirituality, such as those found in Buddhism, one runs into irrational teachings such as the assertion that reincarnation certainly occurs. New-age pseudoscientific writing founded on misinterpretations of quantum mechanics is no more rational. Sam's lessons on meditation are outstanding because they prioritize both intellectual honesty and profundity of experience. Starting meditation begins with recognizing that the untrained mind is perpetually lost in thought. If you try to think about nothing for even fifteen seconds, you will find that such a feat is virtually impossible. Even if your life depended on it, it's unlikely that you would be able to will yourself to stop thinking for even a quarter of a minute. The fact that most of us spend our entire lives lost in thought becomes alarming when we realize that it is impossible to be fully aware of the present moment when we are lost in thought. As a matter of experience, the only thing that truly exists is the present. To learn meditation from Sam, I created an account on Sam's app Waking Up. The app has dozens of ten- to fifteen-minute guided meditations that build on one another, as well as a similar number of meditation theory lessons and conversations with people whose knowledge is relevant to mindfulness. Additionally, I acquired Sam's book Waking Up, the content of which further elaborates on some points Sam introduces in the app. Every day, I have been completing at least one guided meditation on the app and listening to at least one theory lesson. I plan to continue this practice at least until I have listened to each guided meditation on the app. I will continue my practice this week, and I'll elaborate next week about the theory of meditation and the insights that I've gained. |
Jeremy MahoneyPsychological explorer, lover of learning, and admirer of the universe ArchivesCategories |