Brad Warner on "advanced" meditation techniques, etc.

Warning, this is on "Suicide Girls" so you may not want to open it at work.

http://suicidegirlsblog.com/blog/brad-warners-hardcore-zen-juggling/

This is an interesting take on the purposes of meditation and whether or not "advanced" meditation techniques are necessary or just tricks. I like the blog and basically agree with his premise.

Yea, verily! Plus, the juggler has awesome accomplishments. I wanna be like him, next incarnation.

Interesting. I'd agree the "tricks" are not the point. They are fun, though! But they are no more or less interesting or important than being good at drawing, playing the guitar, dancing, writing poetry, etc.

c4chaos has a good reply to this post: http://www.c4chaos.com/2011/09/response-to-brad-warners-annoyed-reaction-to-ken-wilbers-brain-waves/

C4's post sheds more light on the context. He is a bit of a button-pusher himself, of course... but that keeps things interesting.

In that light, my thoughts tend to be: of course people's meditation states are going to affect brain waves, etc. (I meditated for science for two hours today, inside an fMRI machine, and meditation states clearly can be documented by machines - I was able to watch in real time). Is this particular video "real"? I don't know, but it could certainly be. Is it "just a trick?" It demonstrates skill in meditation, if nothing else. I don't think it makes him or anyone else who meditates a better, superior person to anyone else. If it motivates someone to be encouraged in their practice, excellent. If it makes someone decide to give up, that's a shame. But each viewer's reaction is going to be different. The same article, post, video etc will be encouraging to some and at the same time annoying or off-putting to others.

I should probably admit to my own bias here. I don't like Brad Warner and never have. I do what I can to never read anything he writes although it would probably be a good way to practice equanimity

LOL - while you do that, I will sit in my basement with spiders.

I am not a doctor, nor do I pretend to be, nor do I like to make up too much stuff beyond what I actually experience or know... so with that caveat, as I understood:

The machine's the big very loud tube with the magnets that can make images of blood flow in the brain, like you see at most hospitals. "f" means functional, ie it does it "live" instead of taking still pictures, so you can see the changes in blood flow in real time. That said, what I was seeing during part of the experiment was not that photo of the brain you imagine, with colorful spots, but a graph generated from data the machine was getting, that showed a couple of things:

when you think about something like "my foot itches" or "how much longer do I have to lay here" a red spike appears on the timeline.

when you are focused on meditation, blue spikes drop down on the timeline.

MRI sees blood flow, which lags about 8 seconds behind electrical activity. So what you see on the timeline is what happened 8 seconds ago in terms of your actual experience.

So for example I would lay there doing mindfulness of breath for a bit, and then have the thought "I wonder how this will look on the graph" and take a quick peek at the graph, and 8 seconds later that distraction would show up as a couple of red spikes. It also seemed the deeper my concentration, the longer the blue spikes were, and that paralleled my experience quite clearly also.

Part of the point was to make sure the research is targeting the parts of the brain where what they get on the graph correctly parallels meditators' actual experience. So some of the graphs were not parallel to what I was experiencing, because they were experimenting with different brain regions, and so part of my job was to tell him whether I felt the graph correctly represented my experience.

I've never been interested in this "meditation meets science" thing. I kind of assumed it would go away but so many people in what I guess one could call the "meditation community" seem fascinated by the studies and their potential.

When a couple of months back I sat for that kind of bizarre lecture on "mindfulness" from the Spirit Rock person the speaker seemed thrilled to be able to quote scientific facts to back up some "value" in meditation. I see that in other places as well, in talks and articles, etc. meant to attract humans to meditation comunities, groups, techniques.

As is often the case, I'm probably mostly just showing my ignorance here, but this is my sense of things:

First, there are concentration skills that one can develop in meditation that can bring a certain amount of good feeling and improve one's cognitive abilities (and lessen stress, etc). No doubt. And I bet this could be tracked somehow with scientific measurements of brain stuff.

Second, and this is completely separate from the first thing -- there is intimacy. My prejudice is that intimacy cannot be measured and that it is not always the result of "meditation." Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I'm interested in intimacy, that's it. The nuts and bolts of meditation are kind of boring to me. No offence to those of you who are passionate about such things, I can understand the appeal.

Mike, I tend to think to a degree it doesn't much matter what science has to say about meditation in terms of my own practice. But just as some people are drawn to practice because they like the way the robes and candles look, and others because it might help them relax, and others because they love studying ancient texts, others may find that science studies motivate them to practice, and that's great.

Myself I did spend a couple of years in a pre-med program, and used to hang out with my friends who were doing lab research, playing with the gadgets. I find it kind of fun to take tests and do experiments, and I enjoyed helping the guy with his project. Where this particular project will lead exactly is not clear, as it is in the early stages and he plans on continuing the research for quite some time.

Of interest perhaps, he initially got into the research because he was helping people with addictions learn meditation, and then (being a doctor) he wondered if you could see how that was actually affecting the brain patterns, and then he thought it would be interesting to compare brain patterns with people who had more meditation experience than the beginners he was working with... and one thing led to another.

I think my "intention" was to just give in to an impulse to express myself on this subject but in the end, I think it came off as argumentative which I wish I could avoid.

Mike, you have alluded to what I've found to be the cutting-edge of my own practice-- how to present the 'minority report'; how to disagree in such a way as to open up, rather than close down, the discussion. It ain't easy, and I can't claim success. But it seems a worthwhile endeavor, so there's nothing for it but to keep trying.

What we all have going against us is the profoundly dualistic nature of the language: things are-- or are not-- true. So that things as paradoxical as the Heart Sutra are really heard, circuits are blown: a certain percentage of the audience goes into cardiac arrest. Maybe this whole setup of different angles of approach is just the opportunity to be initiated into bodhisattva-level patience and forbearance with one another and ourselves.

I think my "intention" was to just give in to an impulse to express myself on this subject but in the end, I think it came off as argumentative which I wish I could avoid.



-michaelmonson

Perhaps I should resist the impulse to jot something back. I didn't think it was argumentative, nor the exchange "an argument" - just sharing ideas and perspectives. I don't tend to think of you as argumentative, actually, though you do have a characteristic Monson Tone, which I find endearing.

Kate, what did you call yourself in the other thread? Miss "Yes, but"? Maybe we all need endearing nicknames that describe our typical posting style. I'm sure I have a unique (and quite possibly annoying) way of writing.

I'd like to find a way to freely opine without seeming to oppose or argue with what someone has posted previously. I think it is possible and I'm going to try it out.

Chris, I see what you mean and why that was negative.

However, there might be something to the idea that there is a like-minded group of people who are all enthusiastic about meditation and its benefits and are excited about scientific experiments. However, even so, it would be a pretty fragmented group with no agreed-upon agenda.

even so, it would be a pretty fragmented group with no agreed-upon agenda.

-michaelmonson

And it would probably be constantly in flux and having no solid identity...