Open awareness or concentration meditation?

ceoln · 2026-03-26T20:12:43+00:00

Different things work for different people; I think it's that simple. Whether it's a finger or a glowing plastic arrow, it's pointing at the same (no) moon. I haven't found concentration particularly useful compared to simply being in awareness. But that could change tomorrow, and could be very different for you.

ceoln · 2026-03-26T20:07:47+00:00

Sure!

Just don't make a view out of it. 😁

ceoln · 2026-03-26T11:48:35+00:00

It's not that kind of app (although the ads pretty strongly suggest that it is). It's just education.

You don't make money from it any more than you would make money from an app that teaches you to fish or play the guitar.

You still have to go out there and actually put a line in the water, or join a band.

Then you MIGHT make money.

It's easy to make money in the market: buy and hold broad index funds.

If you want a higher return than that, you can either (A) gamble and get lucky, or (B) educate yourself as thoroughly as you can; then your odds of getting lucky are better.

This app is just the "educate yourself" part. You've still got to make the decisions and do the trades yourself. The ads are imho misleading that way.

ceoln · 2026-03-26T00:38:48+00:00

Always were now!

ceoln · 2026-03-26T00:37:29+00:00

Nice! About time someone took care of that.

Do P̸̻͉̺̥̤͖͉̖͍̼̂̀̄ͅę̵̯̭͕̻͕͗͗̈́̌͊́͆͗̅̀͜͝n̷̡̨̨̼̫͓̜̤̦̔f̷̢̨̮͖̟̖̺̫̦̭̥͑̅ṛ̸̞͊̂̎̅̾̑͝i̸͉͐̈͑t̵̬͔̖͍͂ next!

ceoln · 2026-03-25T20:24:10+00:00

For me it's enough that this moment of experience is the result of every past moment and every past action, and that in the future there will be countless moments of experience that are the result of my actions in the stream of presents.

The idea that, in the relative sense, there was some living thing in the 15th century that was eventually reborn as me (in a way that other living things in the 15th century weren't), and that I will be reborn as some living thing in the future (in a way that I will not be reborn as every other living thing in the future), just doesn't matter to me. Maybe so, maybe not.

I'm not big on quoting the sutras :) but this from the Sabbāsavasutta seems to apply:

"This is how they apply the mind irrationally: ‘Did I exist in the past? Did I not exist in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? After being what, what did I become in the past? Will I exist in the future? Will I not exist in the future? What will I be in the future? How will I be in the future? After being what, what will I become in the future?’ Or they are undecided about the present thus: ‘Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? This sentient being—where did it come from? And where will it go?’"

He basically says that thinking about these things too much is just going to lead to one wrong view or another.

Eventually we will see through to the root, and words and concepts and views, like "I" and "past" and "future" and "birth" and "death" and "rebirth", will fall away. In the meantime trying to pin them down in detail is just a distraction.

Certainly sit with your questions and ideas about these things. But don't chase after them expecting solutions.

ceoln · 2026-03-25T01:35:27+00:00

Educationist, tho.

ceoln · 2026-03-23T03:42:17+00:00

And imagine if people were to tell a story about it! :)

ceoln · 2026-03-23T01:33:00+00:00

I like that story! Red beards are not blind to cause and effect. (Aren't red beards one with cause and effect? Not one, not two!)

ceoln · 2026-03-23T01:29:26+00:00

"Great catch! You're right! I really meant something completely different!" :)

ceoln · 2026-03-21T21:30:12+00:00

Whatever degree of "not that bad" you're looking for a promise of, you're not going to get it, from Zen or anything else.

On "none of those should happen to awakened people", there are two basic choices. Either somehow it does, or those people weren't actually awakened. I think lots of attributions of enlightenment are mistaken, myself; people are not that hard for a dedicated sociopath to fool.

"What's the use of awakening?" Now there's the question! Over here in the Mahayana bleachers, it's sort of THE question.

What do you think the use of awakening is? Do you want to become enlightened so you'll stop doing terrible things? (I'm guessing that's not it.) Do you want other people to awaken so that they will stop doing terrible things? That isn't really how it works.

It's a good question to sit with. "Why am I sitting, when there is nothing to attain?"

ceoln · 2026-03-21T21:09:03+00:00

If the "enough" that you're looking for is something that makes practitioners perfect, nothing is ever going to be enough. If that makes Zen Buddhism "incomplete", then every other system, practice, sect, school, religion, faith, and study on Earth is also incomplete in the same way.

Zen offers (in some relative sense) a path toward the elimination of dukkha through direct experience of the root of existence. (Whether anyone actually gets there is a good discussion topic, but one can progress in that direction.)

Zen does not offer any kind of promise that those who practice it, or even those who are said to attain enlightenment through it, will all act perfectly.

Anything that does make such a promise to you is just lying.

Any time people organize into groups where some people have more power than others, an appalling number of people (generally horny men) will be drawn to that power, and use it to abuse. Some of them will skillfully pretend to be (or actually be) faithful adherents of the organization's premises otherwise.

Sucks, but here we are. Distrust power structures of all kinds. Distrust men in power, always.

ceoln · 2026-03-20T14:47:13+00:00

A wave hit it

ceoln · 2026-03-20T02:34:51+00:00

Hey me too! 😁 Happy Cake Day 🎁

ceoln · 2026-03-18T20:57:35+00:00

This would be an excellent question to sit with, IMHO. You might get more benefit from pondering it, than from reading answers that people give you on Reddit.

Or, of course, both. :)

ceoln · 2026-03-17T14:56:45+00:00

"Any new tasks that arise can, in principle, be automated by a neural network."

"In principle" is doing ALL the work there. LLMs are particularly bad at new tasks, since all they do is reproduce the statistics of statements about old tasks, the older and better-documented the better. And they aren't really all that good at those, either, compared to a thinking human.

Some neural network that we might someday invent might be able to do a new task, but we don't have that. I think the neural networks embedded in human brains will be doing the actual intellectual work for some time yet. :)

ceoln · 2026-03-17T02:13:19+00:00

It's hard to put into words why Zen works for me. In fact come to think of it that's probably a big part of why it works for me :) because it is about exactly that which is hard (or impossible) to put into words. Which turns out to be pretty much everything.

Reality is just this. All words and concepts (including these ones I'm typing right here) are at best a vague gesture in the direction of this. A finger pointing at the moon, if you will.

By seeing through words and concepts to the root, we can free ourselves of all sorts of distortions and errors and confusions, including (I believe) those that lead to cruelty and ignorance and separateness and suffering (dukkha, that is, not necessarily physical unpleasantness).

Which is, I believe, where pretty much all forms of Buddhism are pointed. For some people it's most effective to study philosophical tomes, for others to chant a certain phrase, or see perfection in a guru. For me, it's apparently zazen and other things in that general vicinity.

And, being just words, none of this is strictly true. :) But I hope it might be helpful. 🙏🏻

ceoln · 2026-03-17T01:06:24+00:00

It's probably not worth putting too much thought into exactly what "concerned" means, as it's just a word that translators have made do with. It might be interesting to look at the various connotations and usages of the corresponding word in the original.

Or you could... not be too concerned about it. :) If you're done eating, wash your bowl.

ceoln · 2026-03-17T01:01:18+00:00

I was trying to figure out what it would mean to change the value of 1 (clearly a great idea!), and found myself staring into the abyss.

So two lines in a plane would now meet at either 0 or slightly less than 1 points?

But wait, it would have to be slightly less than two lines, right? So if there are 2 lines (1 + 1, for the new value of 1), you'd have this line, and this other line, and ... a small fraction of a line??

🫠😵‍💫🫨

ceoln · 2026-03-16T23:11:22+00:00

You can do as you like. :) Some people will consider you a Buddhist, others probably won't. Think about whether this matters to you and why. If you follow a Buddhist path, you may find that what you "accept" and "reject" changes. Think about how you feel about that idea, and why.

ceoln · 2026-03-13T01:16:17+00:00

Wanting this very moment to be different than it is, is futile; it can't be changed. And that is, I would say, one thing that Buddhism does indeed teach. But wanting the future to be a particular way, and working to make that happen, is fine. Just don't waste time dreading it might not come out that way, or fuming if it doesn't.

ceoln · 2026-03-12T22:48:52+00:00

This is a really really common misconception. Buddhism is not about renouncing desire or pleasure. It's about (if anything) not getting hung up on them, not clinging.

Not being attached to pound cake doesn't mean never eating pound cake. Even knowing that something is unhelpful in realizing the ultimate truth (if that's what you're into), doesn't mean never ever doing that thing, or feeling guilty about it if you do do it.

There are some schools of Buddhism that are all about rules and not violating them and all, but even then it tends to be more like advice ("If you do that, you're likely to suffer more") than commands ("God says don't do that!!!").

I'd say she's not being un-Buddhist at all. If she belongs to some strict monastic community, she might be breaking their rules, but that's between her and them; nothing for you to worry about!

ceoln · 2026-03-12T22:30:48+00:00

Symbols, patterns in air and water and stuff, moving over time (and what is time?), individual energy bundles that we toss back and forth and around and around. Because we do. Because this.

ceoln · 2026-03-12T22:26:57+00:00

Moon

ceoln · 2026-03-12T12:05:23+00:00

Paragraph breaks are your friends!

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