Skip to main content

famous and long time Mindfulness teachers not disclosing their psychotic episodes caused by meditation, more common than you think

 

Re: Theravada Meditation went wrong stories

Post by frank k » 

SpanishForest wrote: ↑Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:33 pmI highly recommend this article, though I would argue the title is clickbait, since what went wrong was a specific technique with a specific individual, not Buddhism as a way of life. Regardless, I found it to be interesting to dispell the idea that meditation by itself is a panacea.

https://danlawton.substack.com/p/when-b ... es-bad?s=r

frankk:

I'd bet the farm almost all the people who had those problems (panic attacks, dissociative episodes, psychosis, etc.), including their famous Mindfulness teachers who keep it secret because their livelihood depends on it, would fix their problems if they kept 8 precepts for a prolonged period (pure celibacy, especially in the mind), since that will charge up the jhāna battery and accumulate enough PIE (precious internal energy) to dampen and prevent any of those psychotic episodes from happening.

It's like when you do some plumbing repair in really cold weather, you shut off the water supply to the house, empty out water from the pipes, and if you turn the water back at full blast into those empty pipes suddenly, air pressure built up, big temperature differential, can cause burst water pipes in the house.

Similarly, those cases of long time meditators like above, their doing some partial jhāna, at least low quality jhāna, so the body is moving around much more internal energy than an ordinary worldling. When they have sexual activity, they deplete too much internal energy, the rest of the body and sanity of the mind depends on having enough internal energy, so you get "burst pipes" and psychotic episodes.

Being pure celibate for long enough, will build up enough spiritual capital, will charge up the jhāna battery and accumulate enough PIE (precious internal energy) to dampen and prevent any of those psychotic episodes from happening. In most cases I believe.

more explanation here:

http://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/20 ... hings.html



Related

collection of articles on serious problems that can happen with deep meditation


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Advice to younger meditators on jhāna, sex, porn, masturbation

Someone asked: Is porn considered harmful sexual.activity? I don't have a sex life because I don't have a partner and I don't wish to engage in casual sex so I use porn to quench the biological urge to orgasm. I can't see that's it's harmful because nobody is being forced into it. The actors are all paid well and claim to enjoy it etc. The only harm I can see is that it's so accessible these days on smart devices and so children may access it but I believe that this is the parents responsibility to not allow unsupervised use of devices etc. Views? Frankk response: In another thread, you asked about pleasant sensations and jhāna.  I'm guessing you're young, so here's some important advice you won't get from suttas   if you're serious about jhāna.  (since monastics are already celibate by rule)   If you want to attain stable and higher jhānas,   celibacy and noble silence to the best of your ability are the feedstock and prerequiste to tha...
Post a Comment
Read more

SN 48.40 Ven. Thanissaro comments on Ven. Sunyo's analysis

This was Ven. Sunyo's analysis of SN 48.40: https://notesonthedhamma.blogspot.com/2024/05/exciting-news-honest-ebt-scholars-like.html And here is Ven. Thanissaro's response to that analysis: I think there’s a better way to tackle the issue of SN 48:40 than by appealing to the oldest layers of commentarial literature. That way is to point out that SN 48:40, as we have it, doesn’t pass the test in DN 16 for determining what’s genuine Dhamma and what’s not. There the standard is, not the authority of the person who’s claiming to report the Buddha’s teachings, but whether the teachings he’s reporting are actually in accordance with the principles of the Dhamma that you know. So the simple fact that those who have passed the Buddha’s teachings down to us say that a particular passage is what the Buddha actually taught is not sufficient grounds for accepting it. In the case of the jhānas—the point at issue here— we have to take as our guide the standard formula for the jhānas, a...
Post a Comment
Read more

1min. video: Dalai Lama kissing boy and asking him to suck his tongue

To give more context, this is a public event,  * everyone knows cameras are rolling  *  it's a room full of children * the boy's mom is standing off camera a few feet away watching all of this * the boy initiated contact, he had already had a hug with Dalai Lama earlier and then asked Dalai Lama for another hug which triggered this segment  17 min. video showing what happened before that 1 min. clip and after, with some explanation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT0qey5Ts78 16min talk from Ajahn Acalo with his thoughts on Dalai Lama kissing boy, relevance to Bhikkhu monastic code, sexual predators in religion in general, and how celibate monastics deal with sexual energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK2m0TcUib0 The child's comments about the incident in a filmed interview later https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/world-news/2023/04/18/643eba5d46163ffc078b457c.html The child: It's a great experience It was amazing to meet His Holiness and I think it's a great ex...
Post a Comment
Read more