Meditation- Path to Spiritual Enlightenment or only good for getting hippy fuckwads to stop banging on their damn drums?

Depends on the person, doesn't it? If you're a hippy halfwit then all the meditation in the world won't change you into something else. I guess a lot of people use that kind of thing in the same way others use organised religion: as a way of escaping their pain or boredom. If you're pretty sensitive in the first place then prolonged silence or concentration can probably have quite mindblowing effects, if that's what yer after. The two worst people I've ever known were both very big on meditation. They did about 6 hours a day of practice and went on regular retreats and workshops. I've the feeling it was a peculiar form of self-hypnosis rather than the path to Spiritual Enlightenment.

― Johnathan, Monday, 20 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dammit!

bring alot of drugs and porn

Can I say that 'Drum Circle Is Gay' and not have anyone take offense?

Nothing Worse than walking into a party, wandering over a room, finding four didgeridoos howling away as senseless hippies pound upturned buckets and nobody listens to anybody else and some stoned dude is howling out "funk" scat. I escaped and had a coupla stiff shots of bourbon. Then got another haircut the next day to make sure my hair was short and neat.

I say my roasrt twice a day. it helps me center.

drum circle is beyond gay - is a cricle jerk for guys who are scared of touching each others dicks..fuck i hate bongos and i hate hippies....i did my final essay for eastern meditative practices on being tied up and urinating on myself - bondage as enlightenment...my advice - don't go. they don't let you smoke or drink coffee - ppl have been bropught before hte UN courts for lesser crimes.

If it keeps my dad from having tantrums, I approve.

There was an article in Newsweek, I think, or Scientific American about meditation. They had digitized pictures of a regular brain and a meditating brain (how they got them, I do not know. Cat scan a buddhist?) the meditating brain was showing more activity at the back of the head, where a regular brain's activity was only in the frontmost portion (and a very little portion compared to the entire upper backside). Anyway, it was interesting. There's a whole book about how the right side of the brain is the God Spot that accounts for near death experiences/visions and stuff called Where God Lives. I started meditating about a year ago after making fun of my girlfriend for the very same thing. I gotta tell ya, there's definitely something to it. Of course, it's been proven for 1000s of years, but this won't deter a naysayer from poking fun at people (for what? minding their own business and trying to better themselves?). You never really know till you've made a concious effort to try it for a long time, rather than just once or twice.

I've never been able to make that effort. There are always so many things to do that not doing keeps getting put off.

This thread is beginning to sound like the Grateful Dead thread over in ILM a month ago. It's always fun to bash hippies, as well as New Age nitwits, but I don't think there's anything wrong with meditation per se. It's just how certain folks go about it, I think. From what I understand about Eastern religions and certain meditative Catholic orders (like the Trappists and the Franciscans), it's part of their larger set of spiritual beliefs from which the act of meditating can't really be easily separated. So it's prob. possible to meditate successfully outside of that set of beliefs -- prob. therapeutic too -- but I dunno if it would be properly spiritual if meditation is yanked out of a spiritual context. Or so I think.

The Zen Koan works well here Eat Rice Wash Bowl. If you live an aware life medation comes from all you do. But i am not that clear. so i mediate .