It’s something I heard, well read, in a Buddhist magazine (or forum). I heard it said that we don’t genuinely feel anything during meditation. Does this mean that how we feel about events and things that happen to us is not real? Another person told me that we don’t genuinely feel things in meditation because nothing is happening to cause such feelings but that out in the world we do because there is something happening. Is this true? What does it have to say in regards to our feelings, which some think are important to navigating the world and helping us decide.
These were some of the quotes that I read in the forum:
“You spend enough time in meditation, you will realize that you never genuinely feel feelings in the first place
it is all just cause and effect response
and a lot of the time the specificity of that response is ascribed to how societal expectations dictate one should be effected by a particular cause
loss–>sadness
gain–>joy”
And:
“The only “proper” way of being in the world is acceptance of the good and the bad, without feeling inherently joyful or badly about it”
“after that first level, it is appropriate to feel a variety of ways to share in social experiences
if people around you are depressed over loss, the compassionate thing is often to commiserate with them, rather than tell them their loss is false and not worth crying over
if people around you want to give you gifts and celebrate their promotion at work, the compassionate thing is to thank them for the gifts and share in their celebration to maximize their feelings of joy
in both situations, the individual with “true understanding” knows there is no reason to feel anything with regards to either situation as they are just random things that occur through particle and waves in reality colliding
but the conventionally appropriate way of being in the world may include feeling depressed over things to empathetically connect with other people”
I think that what you feel, you feel. It’s not possible to ‘disingenuinely’ feel emotion - your emotion is an aspect of your mental state. Your mental state is the state that your mentality is in. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
My reaction to your quotes:
Quote 1 is messing with terms. Yes, your emotional state is effected by stimuli, including your opinions about things, and effects your thinking. That doesn’t make it less genuine - that’s just how it works. If he doesn’t like that it’s his problem.
Quote 2 is just claiming that a person should be impassive and unflappable. Which isn’t surprising from a meditative type. But it’s just his opinion - I personally think people should be happy and friendly.
Quote 3 is a dude demonstrating why dorm-room philosophy sucks - he’s making an argument akin to arguing that you can’t put things on tables because tables really are mostly empty space with widely-spread molecules with nothing between them, so anything you would put on a table would fall right through. It’s an example of adding more knowledge to become less right.
Just in a more general sense: you definitely do feel things during meditation. What you’re supposed to eventually be able to do is feel without reacting. Same as you’re supposed to be able to think without reacting.
This can have the side effect that the feelings don’t get as intense, because you’re not actively fueling them. That’s one of the ideas of mindfulness meditation–that if you don’t resist your uncomfortable thoughts or feelings, they won’t be as strong, and thus won’t last as long.
The main thing about meditation is that nothing you feel or think is wrong. It’s just your mind acting like the way it normally does. And you’re supposed to just gently, with kindness, redirect your thoughts back towards your meditation, whether that’s your breath, a word you focus on, what you are feeling in the present moment, etc. And if the feeling is still there, it’s still there. Let it be there, and don’t fight it.
At least that’s been my understanding. I actually checked out a guide for mindfulness meditation specifically for depression, as well as ACT therapy which is about adding mindfulness to stuff like CBT.
If you reply to this post and are interested, OP, I’ll see if I can find the stuff I was using at the time. (I now stick with more Christian meditation. Though I note that a lot of the guided meditations publicly available still leaves things to be desired.)
I think I was worried about what it meant, that I don’t genuinely feel anything because it’s all cause and effect and impacted by the social situation. Which then makes me wonder if my reaction to the things I like and enjoy doing is false and wrong.
That is a definition of “feel” so disconnected from the human experience that it’s useless to you. Feeling are ALL a reaction to external stimuli (here I am including the physical sensations of your body as “stimuli.”) You don’t have feelings except as a reaction to what you sense. Self control is the management of emotion, not its denial.
Life is cause and effect. The very reason you exist is due to a ‘social situation’. Why do you spend so much time and energy trying to disassociate (emotionally distance) yourself from life and living? You’re only making it worse for yourself, you know.
Meditation especially in Buddhism and Hinduism (yoga) is a shift from the Western paradigm : “I think, therefore I exist”.
It is indeed : “I exist, therefore I think”. There is a conscious part of you that exists and doesn’t think - meditation is just a self realization of that.
People who do not meditate have other ways of realizing the same state. It’s the same state you get into when you are doing your favorite thing : a state when you lose account of time. It could be gardening, reading, painting, cooking … in this state, it maybe correct to say that you are not feeling any emotion. It maybe more correct to say that you lose judgement and exist just because.
Meditation is the same thing except you do it consciously but not consciously. It’s double speak, I know but here is how it works.
You decide that you are going to watch your mind and NO you absolutely don’t try to control it or stop feeling. You just watch your mind doing it’s thing like in a mirror or a movie and let its do it thing. After a while of doing this - you get into a state of deep relaxation where the feelings continue but you see them as an observer and not personified.
Some people reach the state by concentrating on their breath, some chant a mantra in their mind, some count beads…
I’ve tried to cut out most of the spiritual/religious Bs and am an Hindu Atheist at heart. 20 mins is the ideal time for meditation that most people need.
To the OP: You have pointed out over and over and over again how much you disagree with Buddhist philosophy…and yet you keep going back to it to find more stuff you disagree with. Might I suggest you stop doing this and perhaps look for a philosophy you find more palatable?
It’s more like I heard a person mention it in a forum and I got into a discussion with them about it.
I was really bothered by the words she said because I thought that meant that my life was a lie if I don’t genuinely feel things then that means my feelings to others and things is fake. That I don’t like the ocean for reals, or my dogs, etc.
If you’re going to float an “I don’t genuinely feel things” in the wake of an “I was really bothered by”, could you at least put those in separate sentences?
I go with Czarcasm: find a philosophy you like, and study and practice it.
Hard to go wrong with proper Epicureanism. Seek for pleasure…in a sophisticated and mature fashion. Don’t just eat – dine well! Don’t eat too much. Dieting can be good, even if it doesn’t give pleasure, because it can improve health, and being healthy will give you, in the long run, more pleasure than eating a big hamburger. Moderation is one of the best guides to happiness: too much or too little of nearly anything will diminish pleasure.
Feelings? Great, in moderation! Even fear can be a source of pleasure, as in watching a really good horror movie. Seek for the balance that fits you best.
Obsessing about abstract ideas does not appear to be giving you pleasure. (But talking about them on this BBS does give me pleasure, so…thank you!)
THat’s not really my worry. I tried to live that sort of life of pleasure but it became empty and soulless pretty fast.
What I was concerned about that comment was that it meant I don’t genuinely feel things and that I am just selecting what is right for the moment according to social convention. That just feels so…fake.