I was taught basic breathing meditation from a Vietnamese nun; but I'm not an expert. There are so many variations that I don't understand. I don't know much about Zen or it's take on meditation or mindfulness. On meditation, I know when I do it right, but have trouble helping people learn. I have trouble when I most need it (highly stressed), as I have the most trouble taking the time to relax without feeling too guilty.

As far as "inventing". I know what you (@reg_dunlop) mean but I don't see too much real harm. My father was into a book that talked about "not thinking". It was just a re-framing of part of mindfulness. If it helps... I'm not going to fuss about it.

As far as eyes. I was taught to not close my eyes completely but most of the way. I saw a documentary that explored Tibetan monks and their meditation. From what I recall, one of the monks said to use the eyelids as adjustable window blinds(or a valve... I'm paraphrasing to my understanding of what he was saying) so that if they got a bit sleepy they would open them more.

Personally, I'm a big believer in mindfulness but I do have some questions on some finer points. I might even aspire to teach it, but need further help myself first. Let me know of any resources that helped you (anyone)

A meditation practice(in the Soto Zen tradition) over the course of five years changed my life. Daily 40m of sitting facing a wall watching the breath and returning the mind to the present moment when it strays. No judgement. Just returning the mind to the present, again, and again, and again.... The BS starts to drop away. No enlightenment moments. But later, away from the practice you have more patience, more acceptance, more little moments of joy, less fear.

I've been doing it on and off for years. Trouble is my "career" is dead. I think I'm technically "middle" aged, but really over "middle" of life. It's harder to relax the mind and body right now. When I do it "right", I feel more relaxed on both fronts. My body doesn't sit for hours or anything but 15-30 is my norm when it works. It's hard for me to continue, if I hadn't relaxed by say 5 min. I think mine is basically the same except I try and return to paying attention to my breathing when my mind wonders. I know my breathing is in the "present"; so this might just be a semantic difference. *I don't like the word "concentration" because, I think, it throws people off (so that's why I didn't use it)

> When I do it "right"

i get the scare quote usage. but still feel like it’s a good time to point out.

there’s no right zazen. there’s no wrong zazen. there’s just zazen. sitting down and taking what comes. that’s all we’re doing. sitting down and getting quieter.

emphasis on the -er in quieter.

30 minutes of “crap” zazen is probably the most rewarding zazen. i just don’t appreciate it at the time.

something that helped me recently is just giving myself a day off. it’s okay. i’ll come back to it. as someone said to me recently — the worst way of maintaining a practice is to force it / control it.

Oh this reminds me of The way of Zen by Alan Watts.

ive never read (?) it but ill take that as a compliment. thanks!

something was bugging me so i’m adding a second comment.

i often end up crying during zazen. i’ve done it for a couple of years. i was never really sure why. it was just a thing. i cried for 5 mins after about 20 mins and then just got back on with the last 5 mins.

i (eventually) sat with an online group and they talked after sitting once about how zazen and zen aren’t there to deal with mental health issues. that’s what doctors, therapy etc are for. i had been definitely trying to “fix” some stuff that can’t be fixed through the practice for a while there.

this is why having a group or a teacher to practice with is important. i can get stuck in believing my own “crap” because i can’t see outside my own “crap”.

then again, sometimes “crap” zazen is just “crap” zazen. but having a group or a teacher helps with it — at least you’ll know you’re not the only one struggling! xD

Your comment is spot on. The support of a teacher and a group are essential to go along with the practice. They are called The Three Jewels for a reason.

There's a book I've read recently, "Sanity and Sainthood", that talks about meditation and psychotherapy. The idea is something like, imagine your mind is you sitting next to a pile of stuff that stinks, meditation builds the skill of tolerating the smell, psychotherapy removes directly some of the things that smell. Both of those can lead you to being fine in your mind.

As a concrete example, Shinzen Young says that he wouldn't trade a day of his life now, after lots of meditation, for a year before he started meditating, but also he didn't manage to deal with his procrastination through meditation and used psychotherapy here.

Another example of "not everything has to be dealt on during meditation", regular exercise, eating well, acting in a more honest/moral way (whatever those mean to you) all help meditation.

The worse it feels, the more it's helping. It means you're surfacing and dismissing thoughts that would otherwise plague you when you're trying to get things done.

This is something I want to try. Does the time where the mind stays in the present before it strays away increase when you practice this?

Yes.

Yeah, I think the actual "invention" I originally attributed to the author of the blog post should be attributed to the YouTuber. But if this version of meditation is helpful for the YouTuber and/or the blogger, then fantastic. That's 2 people who are benefiting from it.

I'm reluctant to say more about my own mindfulness practice; I feel the finer points about how or when to meditate are open to interpretation. Anyone can be as superficial or dogmatic as they'd like when it comes to choosing a practice, and how they adhere to it.

The point, for me, isn't strict adherence; It's both simpler and more interesting to let go of the preconceived notions of attempting to achieve something.

One thing I will say: If I believe I can't meditate for 5 minutes, I meditate for 15. This makes me more open and receptive in life when I find myself saying "....I should meditate".

Aside from sleepiness, closing your eyes shut also tends to make daydreaming worse.

There is nothing wrong with that though. At some point, observation comes back. When practicing regularly, that happens more quickly.

I should pick up practice again. I feel very lucky having discovered Vipassana meditation when I was 19 and having had some great teachers throughout my twenties. It helped me accept parts of my youth that were not great or safe. In hindsight, going to a psychologist would have been a good addition, but that never occurred to early to mid 20s me, but in lieu of that Vipassa helped me a lot.

The meditation I practice is based on non-duality techniques. Mind needs a problem to solve so ask the question "Where am I ?". Anything that you can see both physically and mentally is not you. You are not the table, the chair, your hands, your legs, your face, your sensations, your feeling, your thoughts, your emotions. Neti-Neti (not this, not this).

You are something beyond all this. Try find it.

By going through the mind goes in a trance unable to think any thoughts. I find it better approach compared to try to disciplining the mind.

For my clients I put it that way: The mind is like a search engine, it can find everything. So don't ask "what did I wrong" but instead "how can I progress".

Usually that's an eye opener.

> Let me know of any resources that helped you (anyone)

For me it was "The Mind Illuminated" by Culadasa. A meditation textbook which tells us what to practice, how to practice and why. Especially useful if you need the finer points.

Staring does something interesting. It does slowly reduce brain waves, but it is harder to hit theta with eyes open. And it works very differently initially. With eyes closed meditation where we, say, follow the breath we use the salience network to slowly chill the DMN for a bit. When you stare at a wall the salience network is what deactivates letting the DMN rip to try and figure what predictions are useful. But it runs out of steam and slowly the state converges with a traditional meditative state. With one important difference: your visual field is still active. Traditional meditation lets you hit theta brain waves. Eyes open is harder to hit theta with but you can definitely hit alpha waves.

So I agree it is meditation, but its quality and mechanism is interesting and different by a bit. It does make me wonder. When we traditionally meditate we grow the salience network (physically). Wall staring trains the brain to simply not seek attention in the first place. Wall staring doesn't strengthen the Salience Network's ability to act as a manager. It recalibrates the Salience Network's threshold for alarm. It trains the dACC to stop firing when nothing is happening.

So both are useful. And provide different neural wiring and myelination.

I'm curious what is meant by

> ...recalibrates the Salience Network's threshold for alarm.

Superficial googling reveals superficial information about the SN.

And more specifically, i'm curious what sort of physiological signals could verify recalibration.

Basic a high priority stimulus arrives. It is actually fascinating how this get sorted out, but the salience network say, gets a signal like, user stubbed toe, massive spike of cortisol along with pain signals filtering in from that part of the brain that manages them. When your brain gets bored it is effectively lowering its threshold to trigger "do something" <time wasters, phone scroll, etc.>. The brain is just wired up to constantly process predictive activity. By staring at a whole it stops registering stillness as a thing to activate this process of hunting for stimulative activity. This effectively lets your brain be more calm with no stimulation as it has learned this is not a "threat" state.

Being a modern human is hard. We were not really built for our life post industrial revolution. We evolved to always be ready for threats. The fact that our brains have adapted so well to modern life is amazing and why we have gotten to where we have as a species vs. others. However, it has costs. Our brains our wired to run the DMN loop non stop. So you can do two things. With traditional meditation you make your salience network stronger. Every time your DMN interrupts your meditation and you flex your salience network muscle so to speak you are training it to shift back to the lower DMN activity state. And with wall staring you are changing the brains calibration of what no stimulation means. Both contribute synergistically based on my understanding. (contribute to being less distractible).