I feel more balanced after meditation. But I have no way how to otherwise quantify it. For example, I'm also more conscious about being irritated when I'm irritated and can avoid feeding thought patterns that would prolong this irritation. Placebo? Neurological changes? Observational bias? Beats me, but I see nothing harm in sitting down, breathing, and observing my thoughts.

> Neurological changes?

Yes, see: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/eight-weeks-to...

Imagine what it would be if you had lived little bit intoxicated for whole of your life. Then you would start sobering up.

You would notice more awareness, more focus, clarity and possibly well being. Rest of the world would seem less confusing.

Questioning the assumption that your normal wakeful mental state is the ultimate 'being alive and conscious' what your brain can do might be the first step. If you persist, eventually you see meditation same way as brushing your teeth. It's important part of maintaining your mental hygiene.

Yes! I have been trying for ages to convince people that the "normal" "sober" wakeful and attentive mental state is not the ultimate ledger of human perception. Most people immediately discard this thought, their minds responding to a strawman argument which equates sobriety with intoxication.

Meditation helps me deal with ADD and depression and increases my executive functioning immensely. I think it should be taught in schools to children-- the mere discipline meditation grants you is worth passing on.

Why do so many people on HN say they have ADD?

Perhaps because they do. People with ADD pursue their interests obsessively. If one of those interests is programming, you'll find you way here. I did before I even uncovered ADD.

Because after a while some of us get totally fed up with living life the 'normal way': that is to say chasing one fragile form of happiness after another.

If it's peace you want, you really should look into Advaita Vedanta.

Happiness/sadness is but another duality. There is no peace in duality. Once you understand (as you seem to) that one can find no lasting peace in ephemeral things (money, status, physical pleasures) it's a natural progression to throw all the dualities away and seek the source, Brahman, the ultimate reality, formless, changeless. Of course given the extent of most people's social conditioning these days, it's easier said than done but anyone can do it.

It's not strange - how we live by default, that's strange. There's whole another original, normal way of dealing with life and situations.

To a logical person the easiest take away is that control over your senses / thoughts / perception frees up a lot of your capabilities with which you can do more - whatever that is, money making, art, nothing. You do it while truly enjoying it. It's great if you can pull it off!

Being thinking meat is a strange thing.

Personal anecdote: meditation can get you to some incredible places. It takes daily sustained activity to really 'get' it.

https://www.dhamma.org/en/about/code

Every human being wants happiness. Whether it's money, cool gadgets, attractive significant others, knowledge, volunteer work, exercise, or meditation, the general goal is to feel happy.

At least for me meditation has taught that happiness is kinda pointless and ephemeral. It happens, then it goes away. Like other feelings as well. I'm not living for higher goals, but I'm more content by the present, whatever the present may be.

> happiness is kinda pointless and ephemeral

Ephemeral? Yes.

Pointless? No: If you are happier, you'll make people around you happier. If everybody tries to achieve that, we'll have a much saner society. Thus, we should take it as our responsibility to achieve a good level of happiness as often as possible (obviously not by making others pay for it).

I'm not sure we mean the same thing by the word "happiness", but like fsloth I'm not very interested in pursuing what I mean by it. I think there are other, better ways to get a saner society than to endlessly chase after transitory good feelings.

The idea here (that one gradually slips into with meditation or other mystical systems) is that there is no "You". Happy, sad, You, other people, all these "things" don't really exist, they're all illusions, mind constructs, artificial.

Once you see the world for what it really is (a dream), all the masks fall away and you're free to go on with your "life" unencumbered by artificial thought creations that another artificial thought creation ("You") thought were real.

Is there a school of meditation that is in line with what reality actually is and recognizes minds as the result of real physical processes?

Meditation is a specific exercise like yoga that has physiological responses (well, neurological in meditations case).

I've read western mindfulness literature, western zen-buddhist literature and some pieces from tibetan buddhists. All the advice on specific meditation techniques I've read there were sound.

The tibetan buddhist books usually flirt in some places with their traditions which can be a bit off-putting but it seldom affects the meditation itself and is something like "if you practice this 50 years and learn to levitate pleace don't brag about it".

So, zen buddhist or mindfullness books are usually fully fully compatible with a materialistic world view (like mine).

Well odds are there exists something relevant, but it probably falls under "quantum mysticism" or other such quackery (e.g. transcendental meditation has actual scientists backing it but you gotta pay 1000$ for the privilege and it's really a cult). Science and mysticism/philosophy don't really mix.

When you're doing meditation, especially no-mind meditation, physical processes are irrelevant, indeed the entire world is irrelevant. Looking for explanations or theories or systems in the scientific way is, on one hand, hard/impossible due to subjectivity and on the other, goes against the entire practice since you're inventing even more dualities and thought constructs when you should be tearing everything down!

To be happy.

I don't do meditation (and in fact get kind of irritated that practitioners of it seem to imply the only way to get in more control of your brain is through meditation), but I practice CBT. The idea is to be in greater control of your conscious and subconscious processes by being more aware of what's going on in your brain.

For example, I noticed that when people make suggestions on products I work on that have the potential to violate users' privacy, I tend to get defensive and argumentative over that point. Using CBT and practice, first I was able to identify the emotions that rush over me when that happened. Then, I was able to notice and acknowledge those emotions happening and finally I was able to control them and let them pass without influencing my behavior. The last step in the puzzle is finding out why that particular issue is so triggering to me.

After becoming aware of these things, I'm a lot less anxious, my relationships are much stronger, my communication is better, and I'm just in a better mood and happier in general.

Actually you do meditation. Just because "science" finally acknowledged and formalized the power of doing what your second paragraph describes, it doesn't stop being precisely what Buddhism has advocated for millennia with insight/vipassana meditation. You actually don't have to sit down in lotus position (or lie in bed) to practice meditation, that's but a convenient time and setting of intensive practice, but the goal is to have meditation be an all-encompassing activity permeating your life.

Many techniques of contemporary dance, for example, are meditation. They teach you to be aware of your full body in motion, fiber by fiber stretching and contracting, moment by moment. It's meditating on bodily impulses, not consciousness ones, but a trained dancer in action has in any case no consciousness of anything else but her body, rhythm and the abstract meaning (i.e. the image) of that, but those three get dissolved into one in dopamine and that's what people call "incorporating", you lose the sense of self.

CBT isn't meditation or mindfulness and there's not much similarity.

CBT is the medical approach to mindfulness. You're looking at mindfulness through a microscope, that's why you can't quite make out the shape of the subject.

I don't know what to tell you - CBT has some small overlap with mindfulness, but they're not the same and there are important differences.

From what I've briefly read in this paper, it looks like they use the word "meditation" broadly enough that CBT would be included in it's definition.

"I was able to identify the emotions that rush over me when that happened. Then, I was able to notice and acknowledge those emotions happening and finally I was able to control them and let them pass without influencing my behavior."

That is precisely one of the central practices in the meditation practice I am familiar with.

So, how do you get started in CBT and establish the practice? Any resources?

I'd start with something like this: http://www.amazon.com/CBT-Toolbox-Workbook-Clients-Clinician...

I started with Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, by Burns, and it's really good but an overwhelming amount of information.

That being said, I do have an appreciation from mindfulness meditation as well as CBT. They complement each other very well. I'd recommend the audiobook Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World. It's a really easy way to get started and you'll definitely feel like your life has improved by the time the 8 weeks is up.