Hm. I followed a link from what I'm told is your blog to a site for finding vipassana courses, and did a bunch of reading there. Some of the details made me quirk an eyebrow, but they could have just been poor presentation, so I went looking for more information elsewhere. I found, among other things, this thread talking about some very negative experiences with that particular organization (as well as some reminders that the organization does not represent the method).
The biggest red flags which went up while I was reading about that organization were the amount of sleep (posted schedule in the application I saw allows for a max of 6.5 hours/night), lack of real engagement with teachers, and pressure not to leave the course. Again, I realize the one organization doesn't represent the practice, although apparently they think they do:
...Needless to say, as I was re-stating that I was leaving and that nothing would stop me, I was (kindly??) reminded that by leaving I would end up on the list of people who would never be allowed to sign up for a Vipassana course anywhere in the world. When I suggested that there might be other organisations than S.N. Goenka's teaching Vipassana, I was
It could be amazing if we organized a vipassana course for rationalists.
We'd meet at a cabin in the woods. For 10 days we would meditate for 8 hours a day, take breaks by walking in the wilderness, and cook our meals together at night. It might even be beneficial if it wasn't entirely silent; we could discuss at night any insights we'd had that day.
Moving us one step closer to Bayesian Buddhist Conspiracy.
Seriously, any rationalist vipassana masters out there want to help make it happen?
After reading the post and 59 comments I have a couple remarks which might be worthwhile and do not seem to have been addressed yet.
First there is not much mention of the extensive scientific research on the topic of meditation and its possible benefits to physical and mental health. I am personally most interested in the U. Wisconsin meditation studies, such as documented here. Those studies use Tibetan Buddhist monks who perform their meditation with a technique which is not exactly vipassana, but they have the largest amount of measured data I know of. ...
This is just enough information to make me curious about the technique and not quite enough to satisfy any of that curiosity. This could be adjusted by adding either more detail (which I realize might be a big kettle of worms) or links to resources which are themselves more instructional.
If I understand the idea correctly, it may model a specific recent problem of mine very well. One could describe the problem as a deep affect pit in mindspace, which I am unable to path around because of persistent external stimuli, and which gets a little bit deeper every...
I must apologise in advance as I have only had a short time to read the above entry and related comments & only have a few minutes to reply.
But I cannot let this pass - I completed a 10-day vipassana Goenka course in Australia and came out with serious concerns about the safety and validity of these centres. I understand the courses may be beneficial to some and there is some merit to the technique, but it deeply worries me that so many people recommend these courses as 'scientific' and benign without understanding the potential danger they represent ...
I've read the PDF.
As far as I can tell, Singh has identified some cult-like techniques employed and a parochial outlook. Which is good to know.
But the PDF also troubles me. It spends a good deal of time on doctrinal matters, and criticizes Goenka for not being fully comprehensive & a perfect path to enlightenment. Which seems somewhat to miss the point (is it good for you? For those of us who don't believe in enlightenment, that is the real question.)
And much of it seems speculation or outright crankery. For example, I was deeply troubled to read claims that some of the experiences were due to hypoxia. What. I don't see how shallow breathing (with zero physical activity) leads to hypoxia, and meditation has such a good rep in all the studies I've seen or heard of - I think they would have mentioned a little thing like hypoxia killing off brain cells!
And then there's the section where he claims meditation destroys one's ability to be creative and is best suited for students or mindless devotees. Well, he does admit he is making all that shit up, but to me, this is akin to yelling "Fire!" in a theater and then "Just kidding!"
Some criticisms strike me as odd. I...
Henk Barendregt (who wrote "The Lambda Calculus" and invented the Barendregt Cube) is also very interested in meditation, e.g: http://www.cs.ru.nl/~henk/Quest/bp/
Maybe this belongs in the open thread, but on the topic of rationalist interpretations of Buddhism, Eric Raymond just wrote something on "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him" (the following is just an excerpt):
...I interpret Zen Buddhism as a set of practices for not tripping over your own mind -- avoiding our tendency to bin experiences into categories so swiftly and completely that we stop actually paying attention to them, not becoming imprisoned by fixed beliefs, not mistaking maps for territories, always remaining attentive to what a
Even assuming that the whole concept of affective judgment makes sense as a fundamental cognitive process (which we shouldn't), you haven't made the case that habitually "smoothing" this judgment is an improvement (outside the pathological cases).
A relevant post that can bring some foundation to this edifice of unsubstantiated assumptions:
A problem with the way you're talking about mindspace: if affect is a coordinate of mindstates, you can't "change" or "update" the affect of a point in mindspace; that's just moving to another point in mindspace.
So what you probably actually mean is to move yourself to a different point in mindspace where affect=0 while "holding everything else constant".
This makes some more sense, but "holding everything else constant" depends on what you choose for your other coordinates... having recognized this for purely mathem...
...According to vipassana meditators, every time we pass through a point in mindspace we update its affect by judging whether that mental state is good or bad. On the other hand, the path we take through mindspace is strongly determined by this dimension alone, and we tend to veer towards clusters of positive affect and away from those with negative affect. The current judgment of a mental state is also strongly determined by its present affect. This can result in a dangerous feedback loop3, with small initial affective judgments compounding into deep mental
It seems the concept of a meta-emotion is relevant here. I think one could describe vipassana meditation as the cultivation of meta-feeling awareness and regulation skills.
ETA: Vipassana may also help develop or improve one's meta-thinking skills (but I'm not sure). I'm also not sure how (or if) we should distinguish feeling skills from thinking skills.
If you're interested in both models and practice you should definitely check out the amazingly detailed "Mastering the core teachings of the buddha".
While writing this post I had a hard time deciding whether to describe meditation in terms of affective judgments or in terms of compounding attention. I find this interesting. It leads me to consider trying to reduce the concept of an affective judgment to a self-reinforcing pattern of attention. Unfortunately I don't currently know enough about attention to pursue this further.
Could we avoid using untranslated terms from eastern languages? The name "vipassana" may be useful as a search term, but it's worse than useless for understanding what it actually refers to. If you called it "affect monitoring meditation", a lot more people would understand what you meant. This is a general problem in all English writings about meditation: they're full of untranslated words that make them seem mystical, but hinder comprehension.
For those who already have an idea about what I mean by an affective judgment, how much control can you currently exert over them? Have people been able to overcome most of the problems I linked to by leaving lines of retreat and using the techniques AnnaSalamon discussed?
While writing this post I was reminded of something Eliezer said in "Which parts are me?":
...That time I faced down the power-corrupts circuitry, I thought, "my brain is dumping this huge dose of unwanted positive reinforcement", and I sat there waiting for the surge to
1) Slowing the flood
The ability to calm the mind and concentrate is essential. Without this, one remains involved in the rushing pattern of affect perception and judgment, and there is no possibility of seeing the process and ultimately changing it. This ability is trained by having one maintain awareness of a neutral mental process, which serves as an anchor that one continually returns to. Gradually one becomes aware of the subtle pattern of affective judgments and can distinctly observe them.
Is this true? Do we need to "slow the flood"? I woul...
On the other hand, the path we take through mindspace is strongly determined by this dimension alone, and we tend to veer towards clusters of positive affect and away from those with negative affect.
The number of people diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or depression is pretty huge. I would suggest that these problems are strongly correlated with a tendency to assign affect to thought processes, as you say. But I disagree with the generality of your statement that we veer toward the positive (when affect is the main guide). If you write a follow-up pos...
Related to: The Trouble With "Good"
Followed by: Vipassana Meditation: Developing Meta-Feeling Skills
I describe a way to understand vipassana meditation (a form of Buddhist meditation) using the concept of affective judgment1. Vipassana aims to break the habit of blindly making affective judgments about mental states, and reverse the damage done by doing so in the past. This habit may be at the root of many problems described on LessWrong, and is likely involved in other mental issues. In the followup post I give details about how to actually practice vipassana.
The problem
Consider mindspace. Mindspace2 is the configuration space of a mind. Each mental state is identified with a position in mindspace, specified by its description along some dimensions. For human mindspace the affect of a mental state is a natural dimension to use, and it's the one that's most important for a conceptual understanding of vipassana meditation.
According to vipassana meditators, every time we pass through a point in mindspace we update its affect by judging3 whether that mental state is good or bad. On the other hand, the path we take through mindspace is strongly determined by this dimension alone, and we tend to veer towards clusters of positive affect and away from those with negative affect. The current judgment of a mental state is also strongly determined by its present affect. This can result in a dangerous feedback loop4, with small initial affective judgments compounding into deep mental patterns. It seems that this phenomenon is at the root of many problems mentioned here.5
Aside from causing systematic errors in thought and action it is claimed that this mechanism is also responsible for our mental suffering and restlessness. Vipassana aims to solve these problems by training us to observe and control our affective judgments, and break out of the pattern of blind reaction.
How it works
There are four aspects to the process:
They are synergistic practices and should be developed simultaneously. This will only be possible later on; at any given time you may only be able to practice one or more of them.
1) Slowing the flood
The ability to calm the mind and concentrate is essential. Without this, one remains involved in the rushing pattern of affect perception and judgment, and there is no possibility of seeing the process and ultimately changing it. This ability is trained by having one maintain awareness of a neutral mental process, which serves as an anchor that one continually returns to. Gradually one becomes aware of the subtle pattern of affective judgments and can distinctly observe them.
2) Not compulsively judging
While periodically returning to the mental anchor, one attempts to observe the mental states that arise without making affective judgments about them. In trying to do this it becomes clear how such judgments can cascade and create deep mental paths that it can be hard to escape from.
3) Smoothing old emotional gradients
Applying this new skill of neutral observation, one works on the long task of undoing old emotional gradients. When observing a mental state without making an affective judgment one can lower6 its present affective value. This is opposed to the previous pattern of making another affective judgment in the same direction, and increasing (or sustaining) its affect. A great variety of mental states will arise during this process, and by neutrally observing them one slowly dismantles the affective structures that are widely distributed in mindspace.
4) No longer forming strong emotional gradients
While smoothing old emotional gradients one must take care not to create new ones. The goal is not to never make affective judgments (I'm not even sure this is possible), but rather to take control of the process and prevent dangerous feedback patterns from occurring.
Conclusion
Vipassana meditation aims to change the way we assign affect to mental states, and reverse the damage accumulated from doing so poorly in the past. Our default way for doing this may be the root of a number of rationality problems. Vipassana serves as a meta-tool, helping one to defuse harmful affective structures that are causing particular problems. I expect that these are common but vary in intensity, and the benefits of vipassana are obtained mainly through correcting these "pathologies".
1 My basis for using this concept is mainly introspective observation during my daily meditation practice the past three years. At the very least I expect it will be helpful for understanding and practicing vipassana meditation, but it may turn out to be a fundamental cognitive process.
2 Note that this concept is distinct from mind design space. In mind design space each point corresponds to a possible mind, and hence each point has an associated mindspace.
3 For a simple case where the distinction between making an affective judgment and not making one is clear, consider experiencing a painful sensation. I claim that this pain is actually a composite phenomenon; it consists of a strong negative affective judgment (or series of such judgments) and a physical sensation. Not making an affective judgment in this case would mean that all that remains is the physical sensation. You would keep experiencing this physical sensation but not have a dying urge to do something about it (like shift your sitting position, for example). As long as you make sure that you are not causing bodily damage, I think that observing pain in meditation can be a really great learning experience.
4 In Buddhist literature the positive feedback spiral is called craving and the negative one is called aversion.
5 Don't forget this and this. This phenomenon may also be responsible for the cached thoughts and cached selves problems, depending on the degree to which cached mental structures are implemented as emotional gradients.
6 This is meant in the sense of absolute value.
Edit: On Academian's recommendation I've added a footnote attempting to clarify the notion of an affective judgment, and what it means not to make one. It's an excerpt from my comment here.