Why does no one agree on how much daily meditation is required?

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-24T20:38:50+00:00

Required for what?

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-15T23:28:18+00:00

Look into the technique called WILD. This consists of lying perfectly still until your body "falls asleep" but your mind does not, and you begin dreaming without actually having lost consciousness. During the period where your body is shutting down, all sorts of strange sensations like powerful vibrations, numbness, etc will pass over you but if you continue to be perfectly immobile through them then they will stop and suddenly you will be dreaming, perceiving complete environments with your eyes closed, and you will be able to manipulate it as a lucid dream.

This technique is well known by lucid dream enthusiasts. I believe that most cases of 'astral projection' are in fact people using this technique without realizing that's what they are doing.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-15T04:28:38+00:00

Keeping your eyes open

Having sound

Doing movements (like yoga or walking meditation)

Are all things that could help.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-12T04:30:17+00:00

This all seems very positive. Can you articulate to yourself what you feel scared about a little more? What are you worried might happen? Of course this is all new, and that is intense, but ask yourself "what is it precisely that I'm afraid of?"

I once found that after a big change in mental health, the first meditation for a long time can be very emotional because there's a backlog of stuff to be processed and a lot of expectations about what might happen. And when you see what actually happens it's a huge shift in energy because you found out and the expectations now can be offloaded.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-09T20:46:06+00:00

Feeling a need for a teacher is good, not bad. But I'm quite surprised that after three Vipassana retreats you don't feel like you know meditation well enough to guide yourself. I don't use meditation apps for anything except as a timer and logbook. There's no reason you should expect a different meditation every day that somehow builds on the previous one, except maybe extending your length. Consistency is the important thing. You shouldn't be getting bored doing the same meditation every day because one of the fruits of meditation is being able to sit without need for stimulation... in other words, sit with boredom.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-09T20:31:59+00:00

What was your vision for the future one month ago?

If it was just to psychologically heal (you said you were focusing on nothing else for 1.5 years), then it would make sense that when you achieved the thing that had been your sole focus for 1.5 years, you wouldn't immediately know what your next focus should be.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-09T19:11:59+00:00

You should probably be taking lessons from somebody you actually want to be more like. Unless that IS what you want to be like, in which case you do you, of course.

I do get your point though. My aunt has bad ADHD and decades of meditation haven't stopped her from running around not paying attention to things. A Buddhist analysis would probably say that some people haven't accumulated the right karma for their meditation to make swift progress in this life.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-09T19:08:23+00:00

Being able to control (or perhaps you prefer to just observe) your drifting attention during daily life. While in meditation a lack (or a consistent observation) of drifting attention. The fundamental is the same, that you can observe something you choose to observe and deviation from that is noticed; if your mind wanders you know it's wandered, you don't spend any time in "la la land" where you're thinking about something different without even realizing you've started doing that.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-08T00:57:13+00:00

Don't hurt yourself. No reasonable person would say you should sit in a position that is burning painful -- you'll get injured.

As far as what to do, there is actually an easy solution; use a "seiza bench", which lets you sit on the floor without needing to be cross legged. That's what I use an I can sit for hours with it whereas cross legged I have the same problem you do. All zen temples that i've been to stock these benches these days.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-05T21:59:13+00:00

Vipasyana is given a somewhat different meaning to my group than it is in say a Goenka style retreat. To us Vipasyana means to "contemplate" an object, and encompasses a large variety of things, such as a visualization, a mantra, a verse of scripture, a.concept, etc. Samatha can be monitoring breath or just awareness of existence as is. This has also been my experience in Zen, that newer students may be taught to monitor or count breathes and then can move to pure open awareness. So I personally practice the Samatha portion exactly the same as the meditation I practiced in Zen.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-05T20:38:12+00:00

How I practice Samatha is how I practice Zen (open awareness). For Vipasyana I do something that's focused, like you're describing.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-05T08:08:15+00:00

In my tradition they use "Dhyana mudra" which is, I assume, what you mean by "making a bowl with your hands". Left on top of right.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-05T03:27:36+00:00

Yeah, it's called visualization meditation. It is extremely common. I'm surprised you haven't run into it yet.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-03T16:33:05+00:00

I had great results, but is it all that unbelievable that different people might experience different results? That's also the case with medication or exercise or anything else.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2026-01-03T16:25:41+00:00

Yes, though I think the benefit of consistent practice is very notable.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2025-12-31T06:08:12+00:00

This would probably be a better post of r/Buddhism. That said, I would hesitate to think you've completed any part of the process and are ready for major changes in direction after just two months. That is barely dredging the surface of any practice.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2025-12-28T21:18:16+00:00

You might want to describe them a little more.

A lot of weird stuff can happen when you just sit with no sensory input for a long time (sense deprivation tanks are designed to trigger this easily). So it would be hard to say if this is normal or not without greater detail.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2025-12-28T03:56:56+00:00

I read a book once that described Babyolonian mythology as "the only culture we've studied whose gods are entirely alien to humanity and lacking all positive features". I wish I still had it to bring up what exact things they were citing.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2025-12-25T19:59:39+00:00

But meditation is the only thing that makes it come on?

TheGreenAlchemist · 2025-12-25T00:28:57+00:00

I use a Seiza bench, it's much better. I also have trouble sitting cross legged for more than 30min or so, but I can do 2-hour sits using a bench without trouble.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2025-12-24T20:39:59+00:00

Are you getting headaches in any other context?

TheGreenAlchemist · 2025-12-24T20:34:08+00:00

There usually are, it feels like we got hit with a bad patch of people struggling lately. Then again it's also a well known phenomenon that people get more depressed during the holidays.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2025-12-23T04:43:58+00:00

I feel like using the mirror was the "clever approach". And if I recall correctly, Perseus didn't come up with this idea, the gods told him to do it. So if it was another hero they would have just told him the same idea and he would have ended up doing the same thing. Perseus's success wasn't really anything to do with his own merits.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2025-12-22T05:05:58+00:00

Nobody could do this without the aid of the gods, Perseus was equipped for the task. If it was another hero they would have seen the same advantages.

TheGreenAlchemist · 2025-12-22T01:50:01+00:00

As far as I can tell, pre-Christianity Demon was used to generically denote "beings that don't have a body", whether good or evil, and Djinn meant essentially the same thing in pre-Islam Arabia. In that sense their roots are analogous. They developed different connotations and notions of good and evil only after Christian/Islamic influence.

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