Meditation demystified

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Linnea
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Meditation demystified

Post by Linnea » 01-07-2004 12:16 PM

I found this article interesting. There is much we do not know. Encouraging the buddhists and scientists are working together.

from Seattle Times -

Several months ago, an unusual conference took place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tibetan Buddhist monks and their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, met with leading U.S. neuroscientists and behavioral researchers to plan future studies. The conference sold out to an audience of 1,200 (most of them scientists) and had a waiting list of 1,600.

"Meditation works," a cover story in Time magazine proclaimed this summer, detailing the scientific research that shows it can profoundly affect the body and actually reshape the brain. Millions of Americans seem to agree. As alternative medical treatments go, meditation seems to have the most clear-cut benefits, the kind that can be demonstrated in the lab (although the article also poked fun at the process, expressing the ambivalence many Americans still feel about it).

While it's true that meditation is being stripped of the mystical trappings that make Westerners uneasy — the chanting, incense and Sanskrit mantras (a repeated word or phrase to quiet the mind) — people who start practicing for health reasons often end up finding the spirituality of meditation on their own. Reaching Nirvana might be even better than, say, controlling migraines.

article link, continues...

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Devastated
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Post by Devastated » 01-07-2004 06:31 PM

Not all meditation techniques require bells and whistles and chants and mantras and incense. The type I practice, Vipassana, relies on awareness. "Just be aware," as the teacher says. Nothing silly, no tools but your own body and willingness.

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Post by Aloha » 01-11-2004 02:19 AM

I have to disagree with you on this Dev, there is nothing silly about those techniques, of incense, Bells and whistles....they have a purpose...just as do mantras....I remember a story about Krishnamurti.. there was a woman who followed him all his life trying to learn to mediate from the time he was enlightend as a little boy and she was a little girl until he was old, as was she, and during a lecture he said if you can just drop the "I" then no techniques at all are necessary....after the lecture she came up and asked " could you explain, how to meditate again...

Meditation will be beyond the reach of most of those people mentioned in the article even if they study their whole lives.... meditation is about getting rid of the mind, about dropping it completely.. the bells and whistles are there to keep the mind occupied, to keep the senses fed, to keep them from hungering...

No one can really teach meditation, just as no one can really learn it...

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Devastated
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Post by Devastated » 01-11-2004 07:26 AM

I did not use the word silly and would not. You must have hallucinated a post.

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