Lets get to the saucy and how i get paid:
Ive always said there is a difference between the two, and ive always said Zen Masters shit talked focused attention not open awareness. Ewk in all of his arrogance has this idea of shikantaza/zazen but its just that; an idea. In fact he has no frame of reference in zazen so he basically renamed this idea he has as "zazen prayer meditation", he literally made up a practice. Ewk blinded by his arrogance, mistakes these ideas for fact. So much so that he's willing to bet on it:
"There are many studies on meditation that indicate that meditation has a measurable effect on the neurological system. My bet is, and I’ll put the profits of this book up against this, is that no matter what kind of meditation people practice, no matter if they call it Zazen meditation or Transcendental Meditation or Buddhist meditation, when we hook these people up to brain scanners and run some blood work it will all look the same."- ewk, taken from Not Zen.
See, a man with a PH.D in neurological sciences and years of research into the effects that meditation has on the brain disagrees;
https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/nyas.12282
Meditative analgesia: the current state of the field
Joshua A. Grant
Abstract
Since the first demonstrations that mindfulness‐based therapies could have a positive influence on chronic pain patients, numerous studies have been conducted with healthy individuals in an attempt to understand meditative analgesia. This review focuses explicitly on experimental pain studies of meditation and attempts to draw preliminary conclusions based on the work completed in this new field over the past 6 years. Dividing meditative practices into the broad categories of focused attention (FA) and open monitoring (OM) techniques allowed several patterns to emerge. The majority of evidence for FA practices suggests they are not particularly effective in reducing pain. OM, on the other hand, seems to influence both sensory and affective pain ratings depending on the tradition or on whether the practitioners were meditating. The neural pattern underlying pain modulation during OM suggests meditators actively focus on the noxious stimulation while inhibiting other mental processes, consistent with descriptions of mindfulness. A preliminary model is presented for explaining the influence of mindfulness practice on pain. Finally, the potential analgesic effect of the currently unexplored technique of compassion meditation is discussed.
Now, if you want you can access the full publication, but im copy/pasting this excellent summary of it from someone who summed it up quite well;
Joshua Grant from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences recently reviewed the research on the neuropsychology of meditation and pain. What did he find out? First, that one could compare the efficacy of focused attention (e.g. shamatha, mantra practice, anapanasati) and open monitoring (e.g., vipassana, shikantaza, choiceless awareness, dzogchen) as to their respective abilities to reduce pain, and when one does so, the evidence for open monitoring is much better than that for focused attention. While there’s some evidence that a very skilled yogi practicing focused attention can suppress somatosensory cortical response to pain through a process of distraction, there’s precious little evidence that the average meditator can do so. On the other hand, there’s mounting evidence from three independent laboratories that open monitoring reduces pain sensitivity and related suffering, and does so in a consistent way. Unlike focused attention, open monitoring doesn’t suppress somatosensory cortical responding, but actually enhances it (along with insula and anterior cingulate responding). Instead, it decreases the prefrontal lobe activity associated with elaborative mental processes (e.g., mental narratives, cognitive appraising, and self-involvement) that exacerbate pain. A study of experienced Zen practitioners showed that they exhibited decreased functional connectivity between these brain regions — as if they had developed a way to decouple their sensory perception from their elaborative mental activities — and that the greater the decrease in functional connectivity between these regions, the lower their pain sensitivity. In other words, less focusing, wallowing, judging and other mental narratives which magnify the pain and color the situation.
So the question is, they've been hooked up by scientists, we've heard the results; open awareness practices such as shikantaza effects the brain completely different than focused attention practices and the average meditator, now does ewk pay up? Is he man enough? Does he go back on his word? Is he a coward? Lets find out.
Things i need:
Bus money Some groceries Smokes Ymca pass new underwear late fees paid off on my library card
Submitted June 11, 2019 at 11:15PM by Leperkonvict http://bit.ly/2IaoMef
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