Comment on Meditation is like drugs but better
rainrain@sh.itjust.works 4 days agoMeh. Your view is born of merely conventional thought and scant experience.
Here’s better.
Meditation is a thing that you do with your attention (aka awareness, sati… depending on who you talk to).
By attention I mean what you direct when you pay attention, what do you concentrate when you concentrate and what gets jerked around when you are distracted.
Attention is the axis of your reality. Its action determines what is visible and invisible, what is important and unimportant. Its shape determines your perspective.
We basically have 2 forms of meditation. 1) a refined form of concentration 2) sortof the opposite.
Drugs influence the attention via the flesh. Like a rough road bounces the driver by bouncing the car.
Meditation addresses the attention directly.
Drugs are limited the way any device is limited. It is crude the way any dumb machine is crude. It is weak as all dumb things are weak. Weak borroed wings
Meditation is not limited this way. Meditation shows you your own wings and then you pump up those wings and make them strong.
Zozano@aussie.zone 4 days ago
Let’s break this down: You’re essentially saying that paying attention to something is how we experience reality. Well, no kidding. If you pay attention to something, you’re going to notice it more. But that’s not some grand, cosmic revelation. That’s just basic human perception.
I think there’s a bit of overcomplication here. Yes, meditation involves focusing attention, but describing it as the “axis of your reality” is a bit much. The basic idea is that by concentrating, we become more aware of certain things, which does influence our experience. That’s a simple process, not some deep philosophical mystery.
The “wings” analogy also feels like an attempt to make meditation sound more magical than it really is. Meditation is a way to help focus the mind, find calm, and possibly gain insight. But it’s not about discovering some hidden set of “wings” or some grand spiritual power. It’s just a practice for mental clarity.
As for the comparison to drugs, both meditation and drugs alter consciousness, but in different ways. Drugs can give an intense experience, while meditation tends to offer a slower, more controlled shift in awareness. Saying that drugs are weak because they’re like a “dumb machine” doesn’t really capture the complexity of either experience. Both have their place, and both can have benefits, depending on what someone’s looking for.
In short, meditation isn’t some mystical or supernatural process, it’s about training attention in a specific way. The real value comes from consistency and practice, not some grand revelation.
rainrain@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Yes scant and born of conventional thought. You talk like a guy who just finished reading a pop-psychology book on meditation.
And your retort consists of “well no kidding” (so we agree, right?) and “it isn’t a grand cosmic revelation” (which I didn’t say).
Look, if your reality consists of what you see, deliniated by what you don’t see, and attention draws that line, then yes, I’d say that “axis of reality” characterizes that nicely.
And if your attention is bound by, say, a thousand habits, and meditation removes those habits, replacing them with intelligent action, then yes, “wings” fits nicely too.
As for the difference between drugs and meditation. You are splitting hairs. I’d call the one splashing on the shore and the other going for a swim. Same ocean tho.
But you think I’m overstating it and my metaphors are overblown, well, that’s just your opinion.
Zozano@aussie.zone 3 days ago
I talk like a guy who read a pop psychology book? That’s very judgmental. I did my best to articulate my thoughts and you arrogantly claim your own response is better, even though the court of public opinion regards my explanation as preferable.
You claim meditation is helpful for focusing attention, but this reply is the first which isnt riddled with grammatical or structural errors. You dont need flowery language to describe your sensations.
As for the dichotomy between drugs and meditation, it all depends what metric you’re evaluating. The ones aforementioned in my comment (which you’ve reduced to ‘getting high’) are the metrics I’ve used, but doesn’t encompass the entire spectrum of drug use. There are ways to compare them, and way they’re different - it’s a very narrow perspective to simply claim that one is just a more extreme version, or that one is better.