Yes.

> have my phone tell me what to do next"

The phone is a tool. It doesn't tell me what to do.

> you are unable to mediate without the help of an app, start here, instead of pretending you are meditating just because some app tells you every step along the way.

Mindfulness and Buddhism is traditionally practiced in a teacher-student setting. Are they all pretending to meditate because they have a teacher telling them what to do every step of the way?

Your entire comment reeks of utter mindlessness. Maybe an app would help?

You can even get an EEG reader for biofeedback meditation like Muse. Works well as long as you stay away from the Deepak Chopra stuff.

I've used analogue timers to determine when to get up from my session. Please explain the difference between an analogue timer and a digital one, for this purpose.

I wouldn't come to a tech site to air the counter-tech opinion and I wouldn't anticipate a fair and balanced response.

1) People who don't actually know what Mindfulness is, other than secondhand sources, word of mouth, etc.

2) People who've tried Mindfulness, and they know a little more than (1) due to direct experience, and possibly a minister who guided them.

3) People who were born into a family whose members fervently pratices Mindfulness, teach Mindfulness to others, and promote it in public.

Now let's see why people hate Mindfulness or say it's not for them.

(1) may say that it sounds weird or foreign, it can't be efficacious, it's too abstract, because they don't know what it's about.

(2) may say that it was hard to concentrate, they kept getting distracted, the classes were expensive, they traveled too far, they didn't feel it working fast enough, it was boring, too spiritual / not spiritual enough.

(3) perhaps their family life was bad, they were neglected or abused, their family members seemed to care more about Mindfulness than this person, and being that "Family" and "Mindfulness" are inextricably linked in their mind, they must reject Mindfulness because it's tarnished by the behavior of its adherents.

So I'd say, don't attack someone who is acting as an evangelist for something, because perhaps they act in good faith. Particularly in HN, this thread is optional for you and me, and so if you feel like it's proseltyzing, just flag it and move on, don't attack a guy because he believes that Emacs and Lisp are the best apps to install on your Linux machine.

> The other points are valid to me, this one belongs in the realm of metaphysics for me.

Isn't this something both the Buddha and modern science agree on? Matter if comprised of mostly empty space. It's physics, no meta.

But also emptiness as a meditative state (Samatha) can be experienced. Whether or not you end up believing it's the essence of reality, you can experience it as the essence of your experience through meditation.

It's more focused on the compassion part. The mystical is something which is easy to find online, but hard to find someone with the experience.

But there are different schools, more focused on study, mediation etc. Some are more formal, others informal.

2) Essential Mind Training: Tibetan Wisdom for Daily Life translated by Thupten Jinpa.

A society of people acting as isolated islands because they all think that they’re out to get eachother is how society crumbles.

You can put others first with boundaries. You can put others first and remain vigilant. The “look after yourself first”. It’s all a false dichotomy, and the basis for an attitude that especially on this website tends to just be privileged tech workers justifying their own ambivalence toward one ethical issue or another.

Another way to think of it is to consider them and you as a single thing (a mandala) and improve that.

And of course Buddhists are not necessarily going to see being victimized as bad anyway. What's that to a monk?

That's just inverting Tibetan Buddhism; if you wanted anyone to believe in something you invented there, you had to claim it was old and from India.

Old and from Tibet was okay sometimes, but only if you claimed your ancestor's spirits dictated it to you or pointed you to the ancient rock it was buried under. (these are called air and earth termas)

You don't need to buy into the esoteric teachings, or even the core belief of reincarnation. But you don't have to reject them either. Just inform yourself on the basics and keep them in mind. "If this bit was true, what would the world be like? How would my actions impact the world? How would they impact my future self?"

In the end the whole point is reducing suffering, and the longer you wait for someone else to verify one claim or another, the longer you're going to be bound to your habitual suffering.

Really?

Therapy in itself has limited scientific backing (specific types for specific diagnosis often do). But it feels rational.

However the main point is: Buddhism, and all religions, focus on why you do what you do.

The Western Way is confusing, partially career & material, bit of humanism, etc. Now that's fine. You can figure it out in this system and some people do. But there is no clear road. There is freedom in that, but it comes with a huge amount of anxiousness & confusion.

The western reason for doing things: focusing on getting external circumstances in order (friends, career, house, family) will cause a huge amount of anxiety. Buddhism, and perhaps also Christianity, give non-personal teachings to elevate your focus to a point where it's less about what you do & who you are.

You don't have to believe me and can wait for science to figure this out. But seeing the rise of anxiety, depression & pill usage, I don't have much confidence in the current understanding of the Western world in mental health.

This particular one does a lot of math which no one has the patience to verify. It just sounds smart, like the papers on nature.com that advertise probiotics.

If you trick yourself into being happy while being exploited by the system it may indeed work (that's why rulers liked Christianity as a tool for pacifying the masses). But you are not solving the underlying issues.

Well, the way you achieve a forum where nobody talks out of your ass is by making a forum without a submit button.

However I agree, it's absurd the level of quackery that takes over HN in these circumstances, as if one SV weirdo's magic mushroom trip invalidates decades of genuine research on what makes people stressed and the ways to mitigate that stress.

Nope, apparently we are just all following the wrong religion!

Well, it's quite true that sometimes instead of developing stress resilience you should simply get rid of the source of the stress.

I’ve seen the best results with niche email lists that actively moderate the discussion quality. But the results are mixed and I eventually decided that it’s a lost cause. People who don’t bring anything to the table tend to have more time on their hands to post nonsense.

I am giving my opinion on a random forum, not writing a study about mindfulness. I didn't even say anything controversial, a glance at the wikipedia page would list a bunch of criticism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness#Concerns_and_criti...

> Is there a forum like Hacker News, but with no "talking out of your ass"? > How could the mechanics of a forum be set up to achieve this?

For example, you could try not to be an asshole and not to "talk out of your ass". Be a change you want to see.

Btw, in your case, a mindfulness practice could actually help. Instead of pretending to be an angry internet gestapo, you can try some basic breathing practices for a few minutes.

Asking people to post their work and downvoting/flagging/banning them if they refuse.

There is no such thing as an external source of stress. You can't measure how much stress an object or situation is objectively emitting, because it is a response generated by the mind itself.

As such it can only be examined by the mind itself, and with that it can be mastered.