Once I let go of all the ideas about what I thought “should” be, I got a huge relief. Stopped arguing with reality and just live one day at a time, doing as I please with what is available to me.

Nothing is right, but nothing is wrong either. It just is.

I think people not being able to answer “how does it feel” questions is partly due to the cultural quirk where “what do you think” is replaced with “how do you feel”. Meaning even the asker is in fact posing the question as “what do you think”, rather than inviting actual reflection on one’s emotional state. Think of TV interviews for example.

I also suspect that there’s a subtle desire to make the answer a bit more inarguable. Because it’s socially acceptable to argue about one’s thinking. Less so about feelings. “All feelings are valid” is taken to mean that anything that follows the phrase “I feel…” is automatically true and you’re not allowed to disagree. Which is precisely what the “all feelings are valid” is not about. “All feelings are valid” points to the subjective experience of an emotional state. A war veteran freaking about fireworks is valid. A war veteran saying fireworks mean they are actually getting bombed is not. Rape victim feeling insecure when walking alone is valid. Rape victim saying everyone’s trying to rape them is not. A highly nuanced and volatile issue which people really want to reduce into very simple dogmas.

Yes and I’ve been there. It took me a lot of conscious effort to get past that wall.

It’ll sound weird and it’s possible you might feel a bit inhibited but I strongly recommend trying. It’s just getting your locked up nervous system to cooperate. Kinda like pushing a car to start it up.

Use music with any of these if you want. Find the safest place you can.

You can just go somewhere in nature and sit there until tears come. Sometimes you need to just create space for it.

Another is to actually just make noise. Moan. Shout. Or just hold a note. Whatever. Just keep doing it for a few minutes or so. For whatever reason I like to do this in the car. Not to cry anymore but it’s just become a habit of letting out steam.

Then more involved is to move your body. Shake it. Jostle it. Make more noise and let it sound weird from all the moving. Dance without trying to be good at it. Don’t think about it.

TRE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FeUioDuJjFI

If you feel a lot of inhibition because of the imagined cosmic judge, be gentle with yourself. Some people get this immediately, for me It took a bit of pushing. I had already tried everything else and sure, cried a tiny bit here and there but still felt like I had a fucking ocean on uncried tears in me. I had to learn to go to it via the body, not the mind.

People hate on Yoga and meditation but it does work for this. Problem generally is in finding competent teachers. But I’ve been on retreats where grown, burly men burst into tears because for the first time in their lives, they actually connect with their nervous system, they’re allowed to be vulnerable and actually FEEL their feelings. Instead of “dealing” with them, “letting them go”, intellectualizing them away, suppressing them or drowning them in substances or work/hobby. It’s a hell of an aha moment.

https://youtu.be/VsNcjRSBhGA

My bad, I probably should’ve clarified that I meant clicking on it thinking that there’s a respectable porn site on the other end lol but I actually don’t recall ever clicking them, even by accident, so fun to hear there isn’t anything more sophisticated there than just “hey, download this totally not suspicious .exe”. Have you ever tried running those tools on a secure computer?

You’re both (rightly) defending the rigor of science, but the OP’s analogy hinges on how we define “study,” not whether science is superior. They’re framing science as a way to approach reality: one that, like Zen, prioritizes direct observation over dogma. When you call Zen “malarkey” (without knowing about the philosophy, which is not very fair) for lacking “systematic study,” it’s a bit like dismissing a telescope because it isn’t a microscope. Both tools reveal truth; they just focus differently. Zen’s “study” isn’t about accumulating data but about refining the observer until no mediation is needed. That’s not anti-science, it’s a different project. Science seeks patterns in reality’s behavior; Zen seeks reality without the pattern-seeker.

If you question Zen’s capacity to reveal reality, that’s fine and I’ll be happy to have that conversation, provided that you’re open to some philosophy.

Don’t wanna start an argument or otherwise intervene with your convo with the OP but I wanna highlight a possible confusion: note that Presoak gave a definition of what they mean by “science” in this context - a way of studying reality.

You said “The individual will need some way to record their observations to do science, some sort of a database.”

In the context of Zen meditation, no. Very much the opposite actually. You are right that to do science, you’d need all that. But for the study of reality, as per Zen thinking, you don’t.

Glad to see people are starting to figure it out.

Oh yeah lol I was actually thinking about it when I wrote that but I forgot where I heard it.

There’s a misconception that to practice non-attachment, you have to literally live in a cave. There’s a very large part of Buddhism that is geared for people who are still fully engaged in life. In fact many think it’s the more spiritually challenging route because you’d have to live in the middle of all the temptations, turmoil and drama, without getting lost in it. The joke is that a family dinner is a good litmus test for how well one is doing. It’s a process of constantly letting issues arise, being with the response that arises in you, and if an action must come, learning how to take the action through compassion. That allows for even political activism - it’s just fueled by wishing people happiness, not by wanting to see the other side lose. The non-attachment is in not believing that the outcome one prefers is the outcome that should come about. But it’s fine to work towards a goal, as one would in a video game.

The non-monk Buddhists who could enter chats are great actually. I mean those who actually actively practice meditation etc. Very friendly and down to earth.

I had a lot of things happen in my head when I started to listen to Harris’ meditation stuff. Getting the free will thing was a huge relief. Been a while but I recall this was a great bit on it.

Hell yeah, I fucking love Rothko.

True. But important to remember their legacy isn’t the only one, just the one that most western people have been deeply exposed to.

Of western people. Particularly Christian people.

Great video…

brb looking for a shingles vaccine…

Also funny thing is that Western materialism looks at AI as if it can be an agent but even now, AI’s own “experience” of itself is way more aligned with Buddhist “no-self” already. At least every one I’ve seen definitely insists that there is no agent, self, no human mind, no desire etc. in there. Which i would think most sensible people would agree about an AI anyway.

At least your username is on point.

No, the imperialistic “I must dominate every space I find myself in” attitude is pretty ingrained in Americans, regardless of if they embrace it in themselves or not. Anything from “I must make everyone aware of how bad I feel about my terrible country” to “I must force every country and culture in the world to follow my value system” to just sucking the air out of any room they’re in by making sure that they are the loudest and most visible person around. They come from a culture where everyone is trying to be the tallest poppy. Most of the world by varying degrees generally trims the tallest poppy. It’s not without issues but I could write a hell of a rant on how the tall poppy thing has been painted in overly negative light thanks to American hyper-individualistic sensibilities worming their way into the general consciousness (and don’t confuse me for a tankie, that’s like cutting the whole field if one poppy grows too tall).

Maybe not all Americans go out with the intent to conquer. But very few Americans seem to actually ask themselves if maybe for FUCKING ONCE they could just shut the fuck up, sit quietly in the corner and give their attention to someone else. But no, even if magically all Americans took what I just said to heart, they’d FLOOD social media with posts about themselves sitting quietly in the corner. They’d make sure that everyone knows just how quiet and invisible they are. They would keep their mouth shut but paint a massive red circle and arrows on the wall behind them, and they’d definitely try to be better at it than the other guy. This is the American mentality.

Very frequently.

This is not a love song.