Tag: meditation

My Unirritating Breathing Meditation

Posted on by Scott Samuelson

by Scott Samuelson

Though I can’t say that I’ve made any great effort to learn how to meditate or be mindful, the experiences I’ve had have left me cold. Not only am I no good at emptying my mind, I don’t want to empty my mind. I enjoy thinking. Plus, the only times I’ve been anything like “mindful” have been precisely the times when I wasn’t at all focused on being mindful.

Scroll in Kōmyō-in Temple, Kyoto

While an enviously calm slow breathy voice is intoning, “Breathe in . . . breathe out . . . focus on each breath . . . let go of your thoughts,” I’m thinking, “Can I consciously let go of consciousness? Wait, I’m thinking about not thinking—stop that. Now I’m thinking about thinking about not thinking. Why am I trying to let go of my thoughts, anyway? Isn’t not-thinking what evil people want you to do? Also, I’m beginning to feel light-headed.” It doesn’t help that I’ve hated sitting cross-legged on the floor ever since kindergarten.

Still, I like the idea of a meditative practice that makes use of the one thing that we’re always doing—unless we’re underwater or dead. Like anyone, I can go down bad mental rabbit holes and am prone to all the clingy egocentrism that spiritual traditions rail against. I could use a calming mental discipline—so long as it doesn’t involve trying to space out with my fingers in a weird formation.

So, I decided to come up with my own breathing meditation. After a few months of trying it out, I’m pleased to say that it works marvelously and avoids the pitfalls of my previous experiences.

Friends inform me that it’s actually a form of Zen meditation. That makes sense, because all the good original ideas I’ve ever had turn out to be unoriginal. Also, whenever I’ve read Zen poets or philosophers, or wandered in actual Zen gardens, I’ve felt like I was in the presence of something usefully useless. Read more »

Friday, August 15, 2025

Blending Psychotherapy and Spirituality

Posted on by Marie Snyder

by Marie Snyder

In my last post of meditation, I suggested that there’s not a lot of harm that comes from meditation and mindfulness training, so maybe it doesn’t need the kind of scientific scrutiny that we might expect from a clinical drug trial. However, in Toward a Psychology of Awakening (2000), Buddhist psychotherapist John Welwood documents three traps: spiritual bypass, narcissism, and desensitising, that arise in part because we’ve leant too far to either psychology or spirituality instead of using both. He also discusses them in brief in a paper, “Principles of inner work: Psychological and spiritual” (1984). 

Both psychotherapy and spirituality are about “developing a new kind of loving relationship with one’s experience,” and both help us break free from our conditioned reactions. But spirituality doesn’t address our early mishaps that affect our perceptions, and psychotherapy doesn’t address the need to transcend our personal feelings. 

When he first trained as a therapist, Welwood was concerned that psychotherapy has a narrow view of human nature, but then realized how much it can help once we no longer demand answers from it. It can help free people from negative childhood conditioning, particularly from dismissive or engulfing parenting, by working with our needs, scripts (now narratives), fears, self-respect, etc. A lot of us don’t learn how to exist in the world well. Welwood claims that part of the problem is the “breakdown of extended families and tight-knit communities” so that children just get influenced by parents or just one parent instead of many people providing a variety of ideas that can help a child figure out where they fit in the group. As far as I understand this point, with only one or two major influences, children might accept lessons without question, then have to “spend a good part of their lives freeing themselves” from this singular impact in order to find their own sense of self. It’s somewhat unintuitive, but a larger group influence helps a child find their individual self by differentiating from others more clearly at a younger age. But whether we find it at 5 or 50, it’s necessary to have this “stable self-structure” before trying to go further.  Read more »

Monday, May 6, 2024

Snake Oil, Vitamins, and Self-Help

Posted on by Mark Harvey

by Mark Harvey

Vitamins and self-help are part of the same optimistic American psychology that makes some of us believe we can actually learn the guitar in a month and de-clutter homes that resemble 19th-century general stores. I’m not sure I’ve ever helped my poor old self with any of the books and recordings out there promising to turn me into a joyful multi-billionaire and miraculously develop the sex appeal to land a Margot Robbie. But I have read an embarrassing number of books in that category with embarrassingly little to show for it. And I’ve definitely wasted plenty of money on vitamins and supplements that promise the same thing: revolutionary improvement in health, outlook, and clarity of thought.

On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with self-help. I think one of the most glorious and heartening visions in the world is that of an extremely overweight man or woman jogging down the side of the road in athletic clothing and running shoes. When I see such a person, I say a little atheist prayer hoping that a year from now they have succeeded with their fitness regime and are gliding down the Boston Marathon, fifty pounds lighter. You never know how they decided to buy a pair of running shoes and begin what has to be an uncomfortable start toward fitness. But if it was a popular book or inspirational YouTube video that nudged them in that direction, then glory be!

The same goes with alcoholics and drug addicts. Chances are, millions are bucked up by a bit of self-help advice from a recovering addict or alcoholic, an inspirational quote they read, and even certain supplements to help their bodies heal from abuse.

But so much of what’s sold as life-changing does little more than eat at a person’s finances in little $25 increments of shiny books and shiny bottles. Sometimes the robberies are bigger—thousands of dollars in the form of fancy seminars, retreats, or involved online classes. There are thousands of versions of snake oil, and there will always be people lining up for some version of it. Read more »

Monday, January 2, 2023

A Buddhist Perspective on Addiction: Nothing is Vital

Posted on by Marie Snyder

by Marie Snyder

Now that the hangover from New Year’s Eve is abating for many, and we might be freshly open to some self-improvement, consider a Buddhist view of using meditation to tackle addictions. I don’t just mean for substance abuse, but also for that incessant drive to check social media just once more before starting our day or before we finally lull ourselves to sleep by the light of our devices, or the drive to buy the store out of chocolates at boxing day sales. Not that there’s anything wrong with that on its own– it’s a sale after all–but when actions are compulsive instead of intentional, then this can be a different way of approaching the problem from the typical route. I’m not a mental health professional, but this is something I’ve finally tried with earnest and found helpful, but it took a very different understanding of it all to get just this far (which is still pretty far from where I’d like to be).

Meditation is not about escaping the world but sharpening our awareness of it. Addiction comes from the Latin dicere, related to the root of the word dictator. It’s like having an internal dictator usurping our agency. And Buddhist mindfulness meditation can help to notice that voice and then turn the volume down on it so we can get our lives back.

In many ways the Buddhist perception is closer to Stoicism than to Freudian tactics, but don’t toss the baby out with the bathwater. Many people benefit from the psychoanalytical method of finding themselves before they can work on losing themselves. This is particularly true with traumatic experiences that might need to be worked through enough before allowing the mind to wander into dark recesses unrestrained. Read more »