Now I can show this to my employees when they ask for vacation days. I won't allow anything but the best for them and meditation can be efficiently packed into the lunch break time frame.
This is what bothers me about meditation. Sometimes meditation looks like a panacea. Your life scks, your boss is an ssh*le, your personal relationships a mess, but if you meditate everything will be all right. Better to put some prozac in the water system.
Life doesn't relent. Even young, rich, beautiful people are susceptible to feelings of unsatisfactory-ness that leave them reaching for the booze and hard drugs or just feeling all around unfulfilled and miserable. Humans are built to run on a hedonic treadmill, not to be content in the moment.
Meditation is a tool so that when your life scks, your boss is an ssh*le, and your personal relationships are a mess, THEN someone cuts you off in traffic you take a minute or two of breath awareness and open monitoring instead of running them off the road and karate kicking them in the head.
It helps you relax into feelings of anger, pain, or depression instead of running from them and chasing your addictive behavior of choice to escape. Also like every other tool out there it isn't 100% effective.
Great reply. I really know that the world wouldn't become a better place, but I'm sure that some karate lessons would make feel better than meditation :-)
Your example was extreme with the 'running them off the road' bit, but actually meditation isn't helpful unless it pushes you to that breaking point.
You need to get worked up, speak your mind, start the argument, quit your job when things get too bad. Life isn't a float on the lazy river. Feelings of anger and pain exist for a reason.
Thats why meditation, as it's sold, is bullsh*t. You're describing an alternative to xanax.
I've noticed a lot of people that meditate struggle with aversion of thoughts and feelings vs "letting go" of thoughts and feelings. You certainly feel every bit of pain, anger, and sadness as a non meditator would.
The distinction is that you work on "meta-cognitive awareness". You try to avoid getting swept up in the narrative thought stream if possible. So here goes from my own experience (doesn't work 100% of the time).
without mindful awareness
Guy cuts me off -> "WTF is that guy doing? What a moron! Someone always has to mess with me! Look at how smug he is. I want to jam his nose into the back of his head"
with
Guy cuts me off -> "WTF is that guy doing? Woah feeling that anger. I can feel it right in my chest and kind of a warm feeling in my face and arms. Hmm interesting. I wonder if he is rushing to the hospital or to some emergency. Just like me, I've accidentally cut someone off before. Oh well what's on the radio"
It helps you build more mature mental models. Mental models are useful but often wrong. Mindfulness can help you question your own mental models and take things less personally. Tons of reputable studies will back up mindfulness and meditation as a standalone or complementary tool for stress, anxiety, depression, and pain. Medication still plays a very important role.
Edit: Upvote to you for bringing up a good point. It is very hard to sort out the bull*hit in the meditation community. There is an awful lot of tradition, psudo-science, and plain old snobbery in this community. Anyone that gets involved should start with the basics and avoid as much of the spiritual hype as possible.
You don't always have the power to change things. Change the things when you can, yeah, but if you are stuck in traffic, in a boring meeting, in a job you can't quit now, then maybe meditation is a good idea. You can at least not hate your life while you find alternatives.
I mean, I find specially hard to improve myself at my job if I hate it, and so it will be harder for me to find somewhere else better. If I'm mindful, I will actually keep working hard, learning, and I will separate myself from the bad feelings. That doesn't mean I will stop searching for alternatives.
You become more aware of the unpleasantness of bad situations through meditation not less. You are just less reactive. In fact, you might take action much earlier on because things wouldn't have to reach a boiling point to make you really take note.
So, here's the thing. You need to make an important sale. Is the best way to prepare for it to get more angry? Is quitting your job without having another lined up what you'd consider a winning move?
There are times where being angry actually helps, but they're a lot less common in the modern world. Usually, it will screw you over. (For example, getting angry in traffic is utterly useless.) Starting that argument because you're angry makes it unlikely that you'll actually persuade anyone.
You'll make a better case if you're calm about it and can think clearly. How do you do that? Meditation is one way.
That falsely assumes that meditation's only effect is to make you emotionally more durable. One of the interesting effects is that when you become more durable, and able to endure, you're also able to make better decisions. You can "zoom out" and perceive options that were invisible before. Sometimes this means the often painful realization that you are the asshole, and need to change. But other times this means seeing that your situation could be a whole lot better, with a new partner, or a new job. The key thing is that you get some space between you and your situation, and this gives you a lot of freedom.
I'm fond of meditation. I just dispute the idea that in a world full of injustices, that meditation is the path to happiness. We need a bunch of extreme anger and indignation to change the world.
Ideally, meditation would spur you on to action; that's the direct aim of engaged Buddhism [1]. But more broadly, many Buddhist schools aim to encourage a direct feeling of love for all sentient beings, which if combined with the philosophy of something like effective altruism [2] (instead of Woo), could contribute to effecting meaningful systemic change.
Also -- I believe Buddhism does not apply negative connotations to 'indignation' as opposed to raw anger, i.e. I don't think it is classified as a negative state of mind to be dissolved.
I don't dispute that "extreme anger and indignation" can change the world, but I'm not convinced that it effects change that is long-term good. Anger and indignation often lead to rash decision making, hostility, vengeance, etc. The world isn't really better when we trade injustice against one group for injustice against another, and extreme anger has an unfortunate tendency to do just that.
Neves, I'm not happy that your comment was down-voted. It's a commonly held view, and one I've held myself. It's a good comment because it's honest.
My personal experience is that anger is accompanied by a level of agitation that makes all action dangerous. If you manage to do the right thing, it is by accident. More often than not, you cause more damage. It's true that anger gives you a lot of energy to accomplish a goal; but it's one of life's sad ironies that it also causes you to fixate on a goal which a) might not be a good one, and b) brings with it a set of (bad) trade-offs.
That said, there may be situations where a jolt of any energy, including that from anger, is ultimately a good thing. E.g. a depressed person unable to do anything, who suddenly feels furious and throws a tantrum and runs away. Gonna be tough in the short-term, but if you're stuck in a rut any change can be a good thing.
Anyway, thanks for the comment and I hope you get more upvotes.
Most of the angry indignant men that I know focused their anger into voting for Trump. If that is your idea of changing the world then I think your on the right track. If it is not then maybe meditation is more helpful than you give it credit.
It's not that everything will be alright. It's a way to focus and take back your life. Your life sucks, your boss is an asshole and if you don't stop, your every move is dictated by the environment and you are just caught in this flow of negative things happening to you.
People tend to be caught up in the past or future. They are either constantly thinking about regrets or hopes and wishes to distracted to see the opportunities in the present.
There's a saying. You should meditate for atleast 30 minutes a day. If you don't think you have time for that, you should meditate for 1 hour a day.x6
