Meditation for Sale
The chances are that by now either you or someone you know well has begun to practise Buddhist Vipassana meditation by another name —- In the past four years or so it’s gone from being an eccentric but harmless hobby practised by contemporary hippies, (under a new name as a consumer product) to infect the whole western establishment. The presentation is meant to be somehow “neutral” to any other considerations of faith or mysticism or anything like that. Fuck mindfulness I say!
If you consider in both America and the UK it’s probably easier to count on your fingers the number of institutions that aren’t engaging in ‘mindfulness’ than those that are; giving ‘mindfulness’ teachers special spaces to have classes and encouraging staff to take part.
The mindful idiots include Google, Kensington and Chelsea Council, the European Central Bank and the US Marines. The British NHS is funding mindfulness sessions for depression as an alternative to pharmaceutical interventions. There’s an all-party mindfulness group in parliament, which Ruby Wax helped launch. Madeleine Bunting has suggested in the Guardian that it should be mandatory in schools. All nonsense in my view.
It’s been touted as a cure for pretty well everything, from depression, stress, anxiety and chronic pain to eczema. And for those who can’t manage the group sessions, there’s a handy app called HeadSpace which enables you to do mindfulness on the go from your smartphone and now offers a bespoke service. The app was invented by Andy Puddicombe, a forty-something former Buddhist monk with a degree in circus arts. According to the New York Times, “Puddicombe is doing for meditation what Jamie Oliver has done for food.” Certainly mindfulness is doing for Puddicombe what food has done for Jamie Oliver, because he’s now worth about £25 million.
Kensington and Chelsea Council practising mindfulness?
I wonder how that went.
Thanks, Frank.
A very good advert for mindfulness, I don’t think…
Pity that Council did not spend some of the money they put into courses on mindfulness into a course in critical thinking of Executive decisions, or some such.
Or even into putting proper building materials that could not be fired so quickly on the exterior of the building, rather than the cheap rubbish some faceless executive agreed to put there.
Parmartha, in business world, mindless people cannot work. They need Mindful people. Also, most business establishments have Health clubs, Gym etc. as well for their employees.
Kusum pontificated:
“Also, most business establishments have Health clubs, Gym etc. as well for their employees.”
No they don’t.
Not a single gym at any KFC or MacDonald’s. Just two of thousands of businesses that don’t.
@Arpana: HA…HA…
Also there was no sprinkler system inside the building where the tragedy happened.
“You´re a rascal, Frank”, Kavita recently said. I definitely agree! And this time, no smile to it is added!
Madhu
The `new age` in general is getting big enough to be a major product right up there in the lifestyle/entertainment/religion money and power stakes.
Spiritual activities of all stripes are a genuine career option these days not just for ex-hippies and downshifters.
Big P,
Here is a template for a flyer for your mindlessness project:
Nothing is impossible.
By unfolding, we heal.
We exist as morphogenetic fields.
Have you found your mission? Traveller, do not go without but look within.
If you have never experienced this explosion of unfathomable proportions, it is certain that you are ready for the quantum adventure of Mindlessness. ™
The galaxy is calling to you via bio-feedback. Can you hear it? Although you may not realise it, you are joyous. How should you navigate this karmic nexus?
Our conversations with other seekers have led to a refining of hyper-intergalatic consciousness. Reality has always been buzzing with pilgrims whose chakras are enveloped in a longing for the ultimate. Humankind has nothing to lose.
It can be difficult to know where to begin.
Mindlessness™ is the answer. The universe is beaming with electromagnetic resonance. Energy is the driver.
Who are we? Where on the great story will we be guided? We are at a crossroads of conscious living and suffering. We are in the midst of a sacred awakening of freedom that will align us with the totality itself.
Bingo! X
I`m not so sure that the explosion of teaching of Mindfulness is all such a bad thing.
We might just be suffering from a bit of irritation at how the world has gone. There we were, thinking meditation was a revolutionary act and now stiffs in offices are doing it, man! Like it was hip and rebellious to like the Stones once, but now, the audience is just a bunch of overweight guys with £400 corporate tickets!!
Businessman drink my wine. Ploughman dig my earth!
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on.”
And it`s ok saying that meditation is only meditation if it doesn`t have a purpose, or if your mind is proper empty. I don`t doubt it is true.
Nevertheless, anyone who starts doing what is basically vipassana with the idea of a specific aim or destination, be it enlightenment or higher efficiency, might well stumble off-road and into interesting inner territory along the way!
Yes, Frank, good post.
I know someone who worked in the City of London, and they told me years ago that the reason companies promote mindfulness is to protect themselves from future litigation by ex-employees for damages to mental or physical health caused by their work demands. It’s to let them argue that care and provision was provided, and therefore, they have no culpability.
It seems ‘mindfulness’ has since leaked out to everyone else.
“Let’s say right now, we start at SN a movement called “Beyond Mind, or Mindless”, and sell it around. Throw in dynamic and stop all this sitting meditation for all those beginners and unexercised office bums.”
Somehow the only thing if I can think of selling is the idea of not selling anything to any kind of bum!
And another thing..!
I don’t know why they don’t at least acknowledge this practice as Budhhist Vipassana with just a change of name.
Osho, yes, did used to say that more people got enlightened through it than any other method…and that it was Gautama’s amazing contribution to consciousness…but give the guy the credit, please.
I still think that vipassana is the last meditation. 99 per cent of people need ‘active’ meditations before embarking on a proper vipassana course.
My main observation is that for those who come to it too early it is just a tranquilliser at best, and disturbs other participants cos they ain’t ready for it.
“I don’t know why they don’t at least acknowledge this practice as Budhhist Vipassana with just a change of name.”
Why? Because religion has a bad image in the world of business.
If you want to promote and sell things – better keep them neutral.
Hi Satchit,
It’s the very way of selling and its ideologies around dealing with ´selling´ that is questionable in my eyes.
Madhu
The exact meaning, function and application of vipassana and its close relative samatha are subjects of enormous discussion and analysis within the different schools of Buddhism. What mindfulness is in relation to all this is not clear and quite disputed.
Even if mindfulness people called it vipassana there would still be argument and counter- argument.
Btw, I love how animated people get discussing the merits of sitting on your arse, breathing, and doing nothing!!
It reminds me of a `haiku` I wrote.
Meditate more
it is better
than sitting around
doing nothing.
Hmmm, Frank,
What an amazing scale of creative explosion(s) and great variety of outcomes is to admire here from your side, according to your Haikus and applying your Haikus on yourself; thanks for letting us be receivers of your sharings thereabouts.
Madhu
Yes, Parmartha, I more than less agree with what you’re stating here.
There is a need, though, to acknowledge that some of the more cathartic meditation (or encounter proceedings) methods did cover, if not reinforce traumata. Only very recently there has been a growing awareness about this.
Those you like to call “calamity cases” at other spots of the exchange/discussion here, Parmartha, are not rarely “symptom carriers” – not only of their families but also of collective streams.
“Every one in the world knows that the soft overcomes the hard, and the weak the strong, but no one is able to carry it out in practice. 78.2
Words that are strictly true seem to be paradoxical. 78.4 Tao Te Ching, verse 78.”
If people are mainly looking for “a tranquilliser”, as you put it, Parmartha, they may have strong reasons for it, and to address that in a way quite besides stating “they ain´t ready” is on the way to developing new skills. That´s happening, ought to happen.
The ancient Wisdom of the Tao Te Ching is very precious, isn´t it?
Madhu
https://www.wired.com/story/the-unbearable-irony-of-meditation-apps/?mbid=synd_digg&utm_source=howtogeek&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter
Then again, mindfulness researchers and authors of ‘The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You?’, Miguel Farias and Catherine Wickholm say:
“Our approach was to go through almost half a century of scientific evidence and tease out fact from fiction when it comes to beliefs about various meditative practices. As it happens, most of the media hype about mindfulness as a cure-all is not grounded in scientific evidence. But it was a chapter on the dark side of meditation that caused a stir, where we described the unexpected or exacerbated mental health problems that have been experienced and the potential misuse of meditative techniques (such as by the military). Our conclusion was that meditation might benefit some individuals, but not all — and it might be unhelpful for others.
We don’t yet know the reasons for these individual differences. There is very little research on why meditation doesn’t work in the same way for everyone and how it might cause emotional difficulties. One hypothesis is that meditation amplifies emotional problems that are lying hidden under the surface. Think of an individual who went through a traumatic experience in early life but forgot about it, only to find themselves reliving it as an adult trying out mindfulness meditation.
Researchers like the amplification hypothesis because meditation comes out clean. The problem was already there and meditation only brought it out into the open. But there is a competing explanation, which we call the rattling hypothesis. We received a number of letters from long-term meditators supporting this explanation. According to them, the aim of sitting down and going within is to rattle the ego, to shake our sense of who we think we are, in order to move beyond self-centred concerns.
When techniques like mindfulness were adapted into a psychological, secular model, this rattling function was brushed under the carpet. But this was bound to resurface, as adverse effects can happen to anyone. In our book, we report the account of a psychiatrist who had to fight to keep his mental sanity after a meditation experience in which he felt the boundaries of his ego dissolve. This mystical experience led to a serious rattling of the self, which he was able to process in part because of his mental health training, but mainly because he had good social support, including a meditation teacher who explained that what he was going through was perfectly normal.
Unfortunately, mindfulness teachers are generally unaware of potential ego-rattling effects, nor possess the mental health training to deal with these situations. We have received emails and letters from individuals who were feeling anxious during mindfulness courses and this was dismissed by teachers as ‘built up stress’ that would go away.
But what happens when it doesn’t? This was the case of Gareth, who tried out a mindfulness course because he was having some trouble falling asleep. While doing the course he became aware of negative thoughts, which wouldn’t disappear no matter how much he accepted and tried to ‘let them go’. After eight weeks his anxiety levels had increased from something barely noticeable to an everyday problem which he found hard to manage. “Is it my fault?” he wanted to know — and this is a common question for those who don’t feel the well-being, relaxation, happiness kick one might expect to get when meditating. Let’s not add stigmatisation to the list of adverse effects. It is no one’s fault when meditation goes wrong.
The problem is how we have come to think of mindfulness meditation as a practice that we should all engage in, because it will do us all good — and only good. This is a religious, not a scientific view (and to be fair, most religions actually tend to be cautious about the use of meditation).
There are many unanswered questions about the effects of meditation. Mindfulness, in particular, is portrayed as a universal ability to be ‘in the here and now’ — how can you not want that for yourself? Well, the bad news is that it doesn’t work for everyone.
But this isn’t necessarily bad. For one, there are many ways of ‘being present’ — meditation is just one of them. There are plenty of other activities that we can do for a sense of increased awareness and to feel ‘in the moment’ (and which may also help to reduce stress and improve mood), such as walking, swimming, talking to a friend, singing, dancing. The list is endless.
Another good thing is that it challenges simplistic notions of our minds as a more or less resilient muscle, which the mindfulness industry would encourage us to simply ‘exercise’ in order to achieve ‘mental fitness’. The variety of experiences (pleasant or difficult) stimulated by meditation portrays mental life rather as a combination of subtle and complex processes with various layers.
Instead of dedicating more research to promoting a stereotypical image of meditation as a universal boon, we need to be mindful of how it affects people in different ways and try to understand why that is.”
There again, even the walking, talking to a friend and swimming that are suggested as alternatives have a dark side and could be dangerous.
You could twist your ankle, your friend could turn out to be a psychopath and you could drown!
The grim reality is that in life (if you want to have one) it could well be necessary to take a punt on doing something that a panel of fully qualified experts haven`t deemed 100% safe!!
Many years ago, I shared my gratitude for Osho with a colleague of mine (lifeguard), one of the most materialistic and rational people I’ve known. Over the past couple of years she said she has found peace of heart and mind through the practice of mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn (zen biologist).
For the love I feel for her, I promised to read something of her teacher, because a method (how) with no teacher lacks perspective about the purpose (why) in facing the reality, and reality itself.
My reaction when she tells me about mindfulness is similar to when I’m in front of enthusiastic people about Candice O’Denver or Ron Hubbard, although I tried to do their courses at Arambol (10 years ago) or Tottenham Court Road (20 years ago).
I think (?) a method in itself is not enough to press the button that makes me say that “YES !!!!!!!!!!!!”, or maybe there are buttons that can be pressed only once in life.
However, before Jon Kabat-Zinn I have to deepen the work of another biologist, who says that life has not only a genetically determined purpose, but also that one of the creators of unique and personal worlds (ontogenetics).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humberto_Maturana
Ciao,
VF
Aaah, Veet Francesco,
The huge growing global and local security market, the legal, the illegal and that one crossing the borderlines between the two – and very good that you mention that here. Don´t know where you have been or are situated.
´Mindlessness´ – for their project authorities is a ‘must’, so to say, to keep employment intact.
Here in Bavaria we came to know (occasionally, rarely…recently) some members of the KU KLUX KLAN as well as heavy Right Wing members amongst them enjoying the uniform and the weapons they are supplied with.
Sure enough, for the little more sensitive amongst them a need for relaxation in their little free time, when using their brain in private or what might be left to use it at all for themselves is needed.
And you are also right when mentioning the impacts of biological science. It’s well known that the old fascism had its main focus on changing the biology of humans and so have the new forms of fascism to execute and fabricate it.
Coming up in very new costumes. Global and local too.
Osho´s approach on active meditations as well as insisting on another way of sharing and approaching each other in Peace has nothing to do with that crap. Needs to be said here, as Tan and a very few others is/are rightly stating some of this.
Madhu
Yes, it seems that even paranoia can have biological origins.
Very Italian, macho style response, Veet Francesco.
Thanks, faceless relaxed entity, wherever you are, you replied with the precision of a common place.
MOD:
POST EDITED.
Neo-sannyasins are doing great job in teaching meditation to Russians.
Meditation is packed with the idea, “Tantrex” plus meditation is a double-effect remedy.
Where I live, Mindfulness was introduced in nurseries and primary schools. The Mindfulness teachers are people who had a ten weeks training. They say it is working and the children love it. Maybe the kids are so tired with the life on the Internet that they welcome this break.
Well, I really don’t know! What I know is that the chance we had with Osho won’t come back. Who could get what Osho was giving, yes, giving for free, is really blessed and free of all this crap.
Cheers!
Getting from Osho and not giving further or giving watery soup is a wastage too.
If we think we have got something from Osho, other disciples of other masters too have the similar notion.
And wonder is those who have no master are also not orphans!
Shantam,
I really don’t understand what you mean. Why this need to share? This need is sick.
If you have something, if you have the taste of meditation in you, it will be shared, no matter if you want to share it or not. You are not the owner of it.
It simply happens! So, don’t you worry!
By the way, sod off!
Sorry, it is an idiotic thing to discuss with a woman.
“Getting from Osho and not giving further or giving watery soup is a wastage too.”
Who is stopping you from sharing? But what you share here is hardly reflecting any sharing, it is reflecting mostly that you are being ultimate chauvinist in full glory!
@Tan 5 September, 2017 at 11:07 am
“If you have something, if you have the taste of meditation in you, it will be shared, no matter if you want to share it or not. You are not the owner of it.”
‘Serving Like The Mountain Stream’
by Allan Watts (Aug 15, 2006)
“I was taught when I was a little boy that it was good to be unselfish and loving, and I used to think that I should grow up to serve other people. But after a while I found out that unless one has something to give people, there is nothing one can do to help them. Just because I thought I ought to help, it didn’t mean that I had anything to give.
Gradually, over the years, as I understood what it was that I had received of significance from the world, I realized that these things were never intended as gifts to be given in the usual sense of the word. However much one enjoys the song of birds, they are not singing for the advancement of music, and the clouds are not floating across the sky to be painted by artists.
In the words of a Zen poem: The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection; The water has no mind to retain their image.
When a mountain stream flows out of a spring beside the road, and a thirsty traveler comes along and drinks deeply, the traveller is welcome. But the mountain stream is not waiting with the intention of refreshing thirsty travellers; it is just bubbling forth, and the travellers are always welcome to help themselves. So in exactly that sense I offer my ideas.”
Allan Watts
From the sense of duty to that of responsibility, if the heart is not a cold piece of glass that just has to reflect.
If any human activity, including that involved in the expression of compassion, is susceptible to egocentricity, the solution can not be castration of one’s own feelings.
The ego of a castrate is still such, an ego.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTcwdxa9G1E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascia_ch%27io_pianga
Well, it’s a start, innit?
At least meditation is entering mainstream. We were all beginners once. It’s a beginning.
When they get bored of mindfulness they will get to Osho Active meditations later.
It’s simply preparing the ground for something deeper.
How can you spin this around as something negative?
Vipassana seems to have changed these people’s lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Za3YXpfCY
This is simply preparing the ground for something more profound.
When Bodhidharma went to China, China was already full of mindfulness teachers, so people were prepared, ready to receive what Bodhidharma was teaching.
I can only imagine what would happen if Osho went to America now, in 2017. Much more people would welcome his message. Mindfulness would give them a taste, and then when they do an Active Meditation, they would realize that it’s even better.
I taught Active Meditation to people who only practised mindfulness, silent sitting, previously. First they are reluctant (“I don’t feel like dancing”) but once they actually try Kundalini, they are blown away. They love it more than mindfulness.
This is just a preparation. Meditation is entering mainstream, and then later, more people will discover Osho. It’s part of the process. It has to start somewhere, and develop gradually.
Rome took 4 centuries to become Christian.
First thought, leading on from a similar comment in the previous thread: The quality of or mindfulness, no mindedness or vipassana! Three weeks of solitary meditation without any cellphone reception or wifi of any kind.
It’s difficult to find such places in the West. Perhaps we need to build some! Fortunately, I have lived a pretty quiet country life between stints in big cities so lots of really quiet spaces to collect and excise the monkey chatter.
Bong,
Even in the city it is possible to do this three weeks meditaton. Where one may close the front door & live alone & not communicate with anybody or speak or watch tv or listen to radio or read newspapers. Just watch the breath in complete silence. You may also use the ear plugs if you need to.
P.S:
But make sure that you don’t go crazy doing that. As it should be natural, not enforced.
Where did you read that, Kusum?
Arpana,
Long time ago I tried to do this three weeks meditation technique in some remote cabin in hills on Osho’s suggestion to me. But I only coped with two weeks of isolation. But the flavour of it still stays on with me, even in big cities.
Fair enough. Thanks for the straightforward response.
I know how hard these things can be. I spent five weeks on my own once. I was in despair at times.
Really, Arpana, I had no idea you were such a wimp.
LOL.
Short of putting yourself in a Faraday cage, in the city you will not be free of electromagnetic pollution, then there is the fluoridated water, smog and so on. Even a Faraday cage may impede the breath and experience of that of which we are most often unaware.
Try this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00AWTPWM0/ref=mp_s_a_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1504631343&sr=8-10&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=meditation+balm
I also have a philosophy on the astral spaces: that is the less people have seen and shared a silence in a place, the less noise. We leave an akashic record of our thoughts in spacetime. It is part of what makes something sacred.
So get out of the city, folks!
If you have silence within, BONG, you can hear the silence without, in a city as well.
I can hear silence in a heaving shopping mall at Christmas.
Bong,
I stuck some of your balm up my asshololens.
My Kundalini hit Augmented Reality and shot up like it was on Viagra.
Cheers.
It’s my feeling, Swami frank, that you are not taking Swami BONG seriously.
Funny, Frank, but I have not received your order, and the only ten (make that 11 if you don’t mind sharing) tubs of this balm are safely packed away in plain sight of me.
As for silence within silence without, I am not disputing the encounters of higher Self I have had in the city, merely stating that in my experience the groundwork did not occur there and I believe that unless someone bought a year’s supply of meditation balm, probably wouldn’t.
Wrong, BONG.
Bong,
If we all leave an ‘akashic record’ of our thoughts in spacetime, does that mean the record is cluttered with thoughts of you being perhaps more Bonk than Bong?
As far as Bong´s mentioning of some ´Akashic Record´ is concerned, the Big Internet Tech Brain indeed mercilessly doesn´t forget anything with indeed sometimes utterly weird outcome(s).
As far as Human Conciousness in terms of an akashic recording is concerned, a ´recording’ which still and will ever differ from pure technical means and measures, it may be worthwhile to take the effort to look inside for other abilities to respond.
Madhu
Can`t be too careful these days, what with shameless shamans hacking into your akashic records and messing about with your karmic credit rating.
Hi Bong,
I have just bought myself a Faraday cage (Amazon do not accept PayPal so I had to use Ebay, hope you don’t mind).
I was really disappointed when it arrived to see that it was not the colour I had ticked and how small it was compared to its photo, but soon found out that once you step inside it’s HUGE!
Is it supposed to be like that, or do you think I may have been sent the wrong item? And also, my microwave is broken at the moment, so is there any way the cage can be used to warm up last week’s takeaway?
Bong,
I am having a few issues with this Faraday cage thingy, which your earlier post persuaded me to buy.
Once inside (and the dial on the control panel turned up to 11) I can feel a pristine silence gently descending and can see a window through Spacetime opening where thoughts stored in the ‘Akashic Record’ can be viewed. Just like you imagined.
But the problem is the only thoughts I can see are: “I’m hungry” and “Finally! I have silenced my chattering mind”.
How do I access the more interesting stuff? Like Osho’s thoughts on Sheela or his thoughts on how long it would take for the infighting to begin once he was dead?
Do I need to buy a special subscription for the premium channels?
Any guidance would be much appreciated, else it looks like the full 14 day money back guarantee will soon be called into action.
I am curious why some London-based sannyasins don´t do internet-based or on the ground research about the people who are providing meditation facilities. Results can be quite astonishing.
If they’re “astonishing” then I am curious, Shantam, why you don’t simply deliver your results here! If you actually have any….
@ Frank, 6 September, 2017 at 10:08 am
“Can`t be too careful these days, what with shameless shamans hacking into your akashic records and messing about with your karmic credit rating.” ( Frank)
“Shameless hacking” – Frank, yes. Didn´t know, though, that executed torture and terror has been/is also part of such games.
Maybe that´s why – as far as I am concerned – I´d like to deny (object to) the title ´Shaman´ for those professionals, knowing, though, that they claim such title for themselves.
Otherwise, as I am addressing you and at least some other contributors inhabiting British Island(s), I cannot say how often I´ve been reminded of the Genius of Wiiliam Shakespeare with or without his co-authors.
For an existential gentle healing embrace of it all, the need to look for other outer as inner realms beyond a theatre play….
Madhu
https://www.dhamma.org/en/schedules/schdipa
Lodging, boarding meditation, all on donation basis, must be old-fashioned, useless approach for great Swamis and Mas, who are used to meditation as automatic drink dispenser machines, first insert coins and engage yourself in meditation.
So many meditation facilities are available all around the West. Few years ago, I have written, Meditation will be as easily available as corner Kebab and Pizza shop. It is happening.
Yes, Shantam, you are a true visionary.
Re “first insert coins and engage yourself in meditation”
Ah, yes.
The West is so up there when it comes to machinery.
I heard that when Shantam first arrived in Germany he would wander around the streets all day, transfixed by all the mind-boggling technology he had never witnessed before.
After a few days, he spied a situation that really piqued his interest. He observed carefully as a procession of well-dressed men would approach a type of coin-operated machine that Shantam had not come across before.
The men would appear to fumble with their flies, then press their pelvis tight against the machine, before inserting a couple of D marks.
The machine then shook, rattled and hummed for a while, and when it stopped, the gentlemen would then, with an extremely contented look on their faces, pull away from the machine, fasten their flies, then walk away whistling happily.
Amazed by the way that these shamelessly liberated westerners carried on in broad daylight, Shantam stood and watched as customer after customer used the machine, all walking away fastening their flies with a smile and a whistle.
Unable to control himself any longer, Shantam rushed up to the machine, pulled his dick out of his trousers and stuck it in the machine and hurriedly inserted a couple of deutschmarks…
“Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!”
He had never felt such pain in his life…
Shantam pulled his dick out of the machine and to his horror…
There was a fly-button sewn on the end of it.
I like meditation practitioners with filthy imagination. Filthy imagination is harmless compared to filthy acts and deeds.
Right now, one Indian guru convicted of rape is gripping the whole nation with his success and sexual escapades.
Google search can open pandora of exciting news.
Worth a look on this subject:
https://www.loveosho.co.uk/blog-1/mindfulness-vs-active-meditation
Doing exercise before meditating is Osho`s (and sannyasins`) contribution par excellence.
It`s good to publicise that mindfulness is best done after swimming, dancing, running, sex etc. etc.
Trouble with formalised meditation is that the participants don`t just get the message but, through peer pressure, that they naturally become reluctant to question, end up believing stuff like Right-wing nationalist politicians are “Zorba the Buddha”, various deluded folks are “bodhisattvas”, “Enlightened”, yogic fairytales and chakras are “scientific”, they were very important people in their past lives and all the rest of it.
If you want your computer to work well, you have to delete unnecessary add-ons!
“If you want your computer to work well, you have to delete unnecessary add-ons!” (Frank).
To be in control, Frank, about ´add-ons´, or to be in control about deleting or not deleting, is a delusion re my experience about the character of a non-organic machine.
Madhu
One of the longstanding Buddhist meditation teachers in the West
- Christopher Titmuss of Totnes/England – wrote in his blog already in 2013:
https://www.christophertitmussblog.org/google-and-other-corporations-use-mindfulness-to-search-inside-yourself-siy-are-you-trying-to-pull-the-wool-over-our-eyes
Besides other items in the category of ‘Mindfulness’:
https://www.christophertitmussblog.org/category/mindfulness
I highly appreciate it.
Thanks for your links, Klaus.