And as a practical matter, just chillin' is safe. But still:
[sitting] can get uncomfortable. But when you finish,
for some strange reason you feel better
Meditation requires some guidance appropriate to the person. Some people are attracted to meditation for the wrong reasons; encouraging them without proper direction can make things go badly for them.
Zen shinkanzen in particular is considered difficult for new students because it is object-less meditation (unlike e.g. Tibetan use of mandala, Christian prayer, or Vispassana body-awareness). Even Zen teachers often start with breath-counting and progress to other heuristics before approaching emptiness.
People are generally robust to thoughts and opinions, even somewhat negative ones, so it seems like the marketplace of ideas and apps is a fine place for that. But I would encourage people writing meditation apps at a minimum to take the same care that any health/diagnostic app would, amplified by the likelihood that someone emotionally unstable might embrace your offering a little too closely...
I've been meditating for most of my life, and agree that objectless meditation can be frustrating/scary/emotionally challenging.
That's precisely why I say that although I use it for meditation, the goal of the app is just to sit down and do nothing for a minute or two. That's it.
FYI I consulted a qualified therapist (CBT, ACT) after building it and they didn't see any issues with my app or the article. She also practices and teaches meditation, so I got lucky I suppose!
I don't know about you but I have way too many ideas. Some are good, most of them are terrible, and some of them are downright evil. It often takes a quiet mind to see which is which and not talk myself into indulging bad ideas.
For me it's not even that I have bad ideas that I find problematic about my thinking (though I do of course), sometimes they just hurt. Kinda like how you might walk around and stub your toe and now you're like, ouch, this is frustrating, and an unreasonably intense pain for such a minor and commonplace injury. In the same way, sometimes I'm minding my business and a painful thought pops into my head and it's like, no thank you, I don't really need that. (A stubbed toe is also a good estimate for how much they hurt.)
Sitting and just sort of existing for a little while without thinking (to the extent I'm able to refrain from thinking, which varies) keeps me grounded in the world beyond thought. If you forgot you had an entire body and thought you were just a foot, stubbing your toe would hurt a lot more.
It's good to think about things carefully for extended periods of time without distraction because it allows you to understand things you would not have understood otherwise.
That is basically day dreaming, not really true meditation.
It's best to do both for different purposes. It's kind of like biking and weight lifting. You could count both as "exercise" but they serve different purposes and can work in conjunction.
It's anecdotal of course but during a first body scan for a mindfulness course I got a panic attack. I stopped and on subsequent days did shorter meditation exercises before attempting another body scan (guided by audio, think it took like 35 mins), which was ok. It's not hard to imagine that if I would've tried to "push through" and hadn't stopped the body scan the first time as well as continued doing it on following days that this would have negatively affected my mental health.
I'm an autodidact so this chaffed at me too. But I have met people who've gone in a very strange direction by assembling a syncretic set of ideas plucked from different schools of thought, and ended up with something that was kinda nuts. And operating from this nutty set of principles sometimes lead them to make bad decisions, and made it very difficult to communicate with them.
I don't know think having guidance from a teacher is the only way to avoid that, but I think without feedback from others in some way it's really easy to start believing your own bullshit.
I apologize for the tone. I'm learning how to not offend while getting my point across.
I must re-emphasize that in many people's experiences, meditative practices could have powerful effects on one's mind (potentially positive and negative), and they are not matters to be trifled about. It's one thing to not practice it because one does not believe in them, but it's can be very dangerous to encourage others to dismiss such concerns as fancy, because it could endanger those who experiment with meditation without precautions.
> I'm learning how to not offend while getting my point across
Yup and you'll find that your point gets across much better once you develop the habit of sanding off the sharp edges. The latter scratch the reader and then draw all the attention and energy, meaning your actual point gets lost. Not all readers react that way, but the ones who do will be more likely to get activated into commenting, and discussion quality suffers greatly.
There's an interesting phenomenon I've noticed: sometimes when people are replying to a moderator comment, they explain what they were trying to say in the first place. Often this 'second take' is a clearer and more neutral explanation. That's how I read your second paragraph there.
HN comments don't have to be completely neutral in every way—that would be a bit too bland, or even robotic—but it's a good idea to err on that side if you're unsure of how you're coming across. Over time you can develop the habit of not coming across as aggressive, and then you can gradually make your comments more colorful if you want to.
They did ask the question in snarky way, and it isn't cool to disrespect people's spiritual/contemplative practice, but in fairness to them it does sound a little silly. Especially if you haven't had any powerful experiences with meditation, I would have had a hard time taking the suggestion seriously a year ago. And I think they were genuinely curious about the answer.
We don't know if they're gunnuh use the app or not, either. They're here and asking questions, right? So they're at least curious about it. I have no idea if this is the case for them, but sometimes snark is even a defense mechanism for people who are a little embarrassed to be curious about something.
I think telling a story about them like that makes things personal and confrontational in a way that's unhelpful. In order to understand your point, they'd first have to discard any feelings of insult that might arise. Which I at least find taxing.
But all that said, I understand why it upset you, and in truth the snark did bother me as well.
I think it was the minimization of meditation, not the part about Twitter. There's a subtext that meditation is too trivial for anything bad to happen.
It wasn't any disrespect, at least I don't have any spiritual practice to disrespect, but rather the cavalier attitude against a reasonable warning.
Imagine somebody warns you about "don't open random email attachments" and a random guy shows up and says "well, explain to me how my grandma's christmas card email is going to make my computer explode".
The cavalier attitude can cost lives. I honestly have nothing against that person who made the comment, I just felt I had to make it clear one must be aware what they are getting into before dismissing something as trivial, and also don't negligently make comments that might put others at risk.
I wish I could have phrased my original comment better, but once it's out there on the internet... :-/
I mean, maybe I should have filtered it through ChatGPT to make it less abrasive since I couldn't force myself into the "speak nicely" mode when I was writing it...
And as a practical matter, just chillin' is safe. But still:
Meditation requires some guidance appropriate to the person. Some people are attracted to meditation for the wrong reasons; encouraging them without proper direction can make things go badly for them.Zen shinkanzen in particular is considered difficult for new students because it is object-less meditation (unlike e.g. Tibetan use of mandala, Christian prayer, or Vispassana body-awareness). Even Zen teachers often start with breath-counting and progress to other heuristics before approaching emptiness.
People are generally robust to thoughts and opinions, even somewhat negative ones, so it seems like the marketplace of ideas and apps is a fine place for that. But I would encourage people writing meditation apps at a minimum to take the same care that any health/diagnostic app would, amplified by the likelihood that someone emotionally unstable might embrace your offering a little too closely...