this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Whoa wait! Feeling good from nothing? That sounds too much like masturbation. Get this coomer shit off my feed my streak has reached 3000 and I don't need any reminders
spoiler
/jIn all seriousness, it is a little like that! One thing I found during regular mindfulness practice is that you get to this place of all around contentedness, and you start embracing the oneness of all things and the impermanence of subjectivity, and all of a sudden stuff starts to matter a lot less. And like, that's great when you're dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression and stress, since it's a lot less crushing, but also I found that it also killed some of the drive that led to action, as there was no urgent need to escape all of those feelings. It helped to a certain degree though, since that stuff also got in the way just as or more often than it was motivating.
And in that way, it was also a little alienating from other people, since all of their petty dramas and overblown concerns just felt very petty and overblown, but you could tell that they were truly and deeply invested in them. It was like, do you not realize that none of that (or truly anything) really matters?
So yeah, in some ways I would call deep mindfulness practice a little bit masturbatory (in a mostly good way). But still, very little to do with cum.
I wonder if I'd react differently to mindfulness practice given I have a somewhat contrarian opposition to philosophies that put the blame for suffering solely on the one experiencing it. Is it even possible to achieve such a state of euphoria and calm if I actively reject the notion that everyone is capable of experiencing it regardless of circumstances? The idea of losing my respect for other peoples circumstances is kind of terrifying ngl
Maybe! I don't think it's so much about blaming people for their own suffering, but more of a recognition that suffering is just another state of being, and in a larger context that being is a part of everything else that is.
In a broader sense I don't think that mindfulness practice needs to directly lead to nihilism, but it certainly can without an underpinning of philosophy that can make sense of what's left after dismissing the subjective as the only truth.
Much like the monk that remains seated while self-immolating, it is possible to remain mindful and even euphoric in even the most extreme forms of suffering, but that said it would be disgusting to try and proffer that example as a way to dismiss the suffering of others in a current state. "hey that guy could do it, so why don't you just sit and be one and then you won't have any problems?" Of course that is rediculous. But it is a practice that can lead to reduced suffering, and it is available to everyone. But it's much like the tech bros that tell people suffering from poverty to "just learn to code". Like yeah, it's an option, and a thing that can help some people, but just because it's a thing that worked for you doesn't mean it's going to fix everyone else's problems, especially not right here in the now when that suffering is happening.
Anyways, your last line is real. It's part of why I got off track of a regular practice years ago - it really did feel weird to be disconnected from people in that way. I felt like Dr Manhattan, being tired of these people and their problems, as goofy as that sounds. I'd like to think that's not how everyone reacts, maybe that was just my young adult narcissism in action.
In another way though, it was almost like everyone in the world was on fire, and I had just jumped in a lake - why is everyone out there still running around screaming in pain, and insisting that I was the weird one for being wet?
There's probably a balance there somewhere. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this lol, but I appreciate your viewpoint is what I'm trying to say.
Thanks for taking the time to respond! Yeah I meant what you said here, like there are definitely people who can achieve peace in the most intense situations but there are also people who can bench lift hundreds of pounds while others can't at all so it really does seem like more of an effective stress management technique than a one-size-fits-all solution to every problem (which I think treating it as such is what leads to stuff like "spiritual bypassing").
This is my own weird thing but I also feel like it's kind of a shame to treat all these struggles over these disparate things as ultimately meaningless. Like, yeah, we all die eventually, and we're tiny on a galactic scale or whatever, but that's kind of a scope error when you consider that our current state of being is our main way of experiencing the world. There isn't anything more important than us ("us" being loosely used to refer to every living being we know of...) because we don't know of anything more important than us that exists, and I think it takes recognizing that and having a pretty radical view of the validity of other's (non-ghoulish...) goals to reach my perspective. Which is that it just feels sad to take all of these things people care about and take a spiritual crap on them because they seem like a less efficient way to find fulfillment. Some of the people I admire most find fulfillment in the most simultaneously trivial and overly difficult things while being fully aware of how trivial they are the whole time.
So it's kind of like, people are leaving themselves on fire, but who am I to judge? There are people who find literal sexual pleasure in actual physical pain. I think that's valid, and I have a hard time viewing other people's desires as any less valid.
Plus I just like art and stuff idk lol