Meditation Scams: Dhyana vs Contemplation vs Practice

Meditation is not meditation

The word "meditation" appears all over, all the time... but who is saying it and what do they mean?

First, let's agree to not use the word "meditation" any more. It has been abused so badly for the last 200 years in English that it's now utterly meaningless.

1. Physio-cognitive exercise: mental concentration to produce physical change.

• The military uses it: Box breathing - https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-box-breathing
• science proves physico-cognitive exercise has major benefits:
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/zensangha/comments/8qiamj/more_evidence_that_meditation_is_just_exercise/
  • http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/meditation-improve-heart-health-article-1.1520585
  • https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2012/12/08/think-yourself-well

1. Dhyana: www.reddit.com//r/zen/wiki/definitions

2. Contemplation: when you think about something and try to understand it, see it from a new perspective, etc.

3. Religious "prayer-based" practices: doctrinal faith + prayer (enactment of believing) + physio-cognitive exercise for the purpose of obtaining spiritual rewards.

   "Generally, prayer points us to what matters to people. It offers a lens through which to explore the various affective and emotional relationships that people craft, nurture, and sustain over time. This entry explores prayer as an inherently social phenomenon, taking its cue from the work of Marcel Mauss. Prayer, it is argued, can be seen as a token of the implicatedness of prayerful subjects in their social world. Accordingly, in anthropological terms prayer may be seen as a way to act upon the world."

...

Let's contrast this with the obligatory Zen Master quote:

Huangbo: . As to performing... [religious] practices, or gaining merits as countless as the sands of the Ganges, since you are fundamentally complete in every respect, you should not try to supplement that perfection by such meaningless practices.

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Wait, there's more!

Huineng (15): “Good friends, how then are dhyana [meditation] and prajna [wisdom] alike? They are like the lamp and the light it gives forth. If there is a lamp there is light; if there is no lamp there is no light. The lamp is the substance of light; the light is the function of the lamp. Thus, although they have two names, in substance they are not two. Meditation and prajna are also like this.

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Welcome! ewk comment: Religious people often intentionally use overly vague terms to make their religion sound less wacky or more Zen or even less religious... just as often religious people will refuse to say where or when a religious "prayer-based" activity comes from.

Once we stop saying "meditation" and start calling things specifically what they are, all of this confusion evaporates... just like it evaporates when we get religious people to provide a high school book report on the history of their prayer-based practice.

Submitted February 17, 2022 at 09:11AM by ewk https://ift.tt/GpDy4gt