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 » Thu Mar 24, 2022 3:15 am

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

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

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