As communists, we understand the causes of many of our woes in the modern life (i.e. class warfare, exploitation, etc), we are also not the most spiritual folks (at least from my anecdotal experience). Both things usually don’t mix well with this now trending topic of meditation and mindfulness in the West. Unfortunately, as with everything on capitalism, meditation was commodified, and often as not sold as the new snake-oil for mental health and improvement of lifestyle for the mordem working class of big cities, masking the causes of the many issues afflicting us in this late stage capitalism. HOWEVER, we know that meditative practices predate capitalism by several centuries. Also, anyone who’s been serious on the practice, knows that there is much more to meditation than what your mindfulness app endorsed by The Economist is promising you (helping fall asleep, focus, put up with your insufferable boss or wtv). So I’ll stop rambling and just go to my question: anyone has any Marxist oriented views on meditative practices? It’s something that interests me much, since the practice is totally self-oriented, and so, much less likely to be subject of socialism/communism discussions, but at the same time, in the East the practice is much more common and widespread, so in China, for example, there must be some interesting views on this.
I consider myself a Buddhist (therevada school), but don’t try to reconcile the pacifism or idealism in it, which I completely disagree with.
We also can’t forget that “mindfulness” has been used historically and currently in vile ways:
- as a murder-focus tool: japanese imperial soldiers used it, and modern militaries are incorporating mindfulless routines.
- for exploitation: US tech companies use it (and have mindfulness departments) to make their workers more productive in order to extract more profit.
- as an opiate / pacification tool of the people: its marketed to workers as a way to “individually” solve mental ailments and stresses caused by external things. Even US cops are using it to “de-stress” from the tough life of fucking over poor ppl all day.
There’s a wonderful and entertaining book called, McMindfulness that goes into this deeply, and serves as great a materialist critique of modern idealism in religion.
There is one type of meditation which I think is helpful tho, because its unitive and collective-focused, called metta meditation, focused on extending compassion to increasingly larger groups of beings. I’m trying to read more books about it specifically because it seems to stand in contrast to the mindfulness movement, which is all about personal empowerment.
You hit the nail on the head with that book recommendation. That was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much, comrade!
No probs. The book is really funny too.
Do not underestimate the compatibility of materialism with spiritualism, they are perfect complements for each other IMO and IMO it is such a tragedy that these twins are pitted against each other. I feel like this seeming dichotomy is merely the result of historical conditions, religion has been used as such a painful weapon of oppression against the workers for so long that it seems inseperable from the ruling class and all their insanity.
Along those lines, yes meditation and everything surrounding it in the West is a toxic cesspool of capitalist evil, but as others have pointed out don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I find even having a nominally meditative task where you just shut your brain off to be so invaluable, I always tell people “find your ‘gardening’ .”
I personally do not gel well with mindfulness.
It’s feels like another corporate snake oil solution to growing workplace stress and depression.
For me personally I don’t want to be left alone with my thoughts and without actual help from professionals, asking me to be quiet and listen to my thoughts and think and be “mindful” is just recipe for disaster lmao.
If it helps people then great but I don’t rate it.
mindfulness is just a cultivation of awareness in your mind. it is not about being alone with your thoughts. you cannot be without mindfulness, it just comes down to how much have you cultivated for yourself.
mindfulness is cultivated through meditation practices, like zazen, and there are many different types. zazen meditation is all about clearing your mind. pulling the weeds from your mind, all those distractions, and everything that clunks up our heads with too much unnecessary thinking.
Meditation is great, comrade. Like anything it’s a tool that may or may not help you as an individual.
Capitalism has commodified healthy food/lifestyle, exercise, medication, and friendships, etc. too but that doesnt mean those things aren’t good for your health and for society as a whole. I think we probably all agree that the widespread and marketed push is just another effort to obscure and distract from the capitalist hellscape that we’re all forced to live in, but that doesn’t mean that meditation doesn’t have enormous benefits. Like you said, the practice existed before capitalism. And in this current age of screen addiction, information overload, and 24/7 lack of privacy, I’d argue that meditation is an important and powerful exercise for returning to a state of mental balance. And because of all of the current BS, it makes sense – to me at least – why it’s increasing in popularity.
There are also so many different approaches to meditation. It doesn’t have to be self-centered. It doesn’t have to be spiritual. There’s nothing inherently anticommunist about it.
It’s great if you can make a habit out of it. It doesn’t cure your depression, make you a billionaire or a ripped gigachad. It’s just, as the other comrade said, a tool in the box.
With social media, news, spotify, podcasts, audiobooks, music everywhere and general distractions lurking around every corner, combined with the stress of the daily hamster reel we often just start drifting through life, more like a machine going through motions rather than consciously living. We start doing things, building habits just cus and start forgetting why we do them, what life makes us feel like, how we’re actually doing. Sometimes you don’t even realize how bad you are at the moment, sometimes you actually don’t realize how good you feel. Meditation can bring you back down, back in touch with your own feelings. It makes you touch grass so to speak 👀
Idk or care about the spirituality and imo for some people meditation itself becomes just another distraction to indulge and loose oneself in. It’s just a concentration exercise really.
i find meditation, and the mindfulness it cultivates, invaluable. really came to love zazen & tonglen specifically. simple, bare bones, practices that can have immediate, and long-term, benefits.
also, it’s wild how much zen i hear when reading stalin/lenin/marx, and it does not surprise me. especially when getting into dialectical materialism, and thesis/anti-thesis stuff about how everything is always forming, creating, starting, ending, restarting, etc.
Mindfulness is just focussing your thoughts on the here and now without getting carried away by all your other thoughts and feelings. That can be very useful to do in busy situations like work, sports etc. It’s not some ‘do this to see the light of Jesus Christ and be saved’ type of thing. There’s not that much spirituality involved really.
So it goes perfectly fine with communist thought. Just like how religion even can go along within communist societies.
I practiced Taoism type meditation which originated in China. It’s pretty good. It is just a way to focus thoughts and clear the mind. Look at things from a logical standpoint and not let emotions get involved. I used a 365 daily Tao book that I would read a passage a day and meditate on it for a bit as I slowly cleared all thought from my head. Taoist ideologies are pretty good too. I don’t really think it has a connection with any political ideology. It’s more of just a way to look at the world. It’s really hard to explain it without just writing the book. The story of the Chinese farmer comes to mind. https://youtu.be/CzxprrfoEMM
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Deranged parapsychology is my middle name 🤩🤩🤩
What are PK trials? Are you trying to telekinetically affect random number generators, is that what you’re saying?
I relate strong to your experience with strange effects while meditating…if I meditate with my eyes open I can turn the entire world into, like, washed out high contrast static. And if I do it with my eyes closed I can see colors. If I focus my awareness towards my forehead…well…[REDACTED]
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(Sorry for late reply!! 😖)
WOW this is AWESOME interesting!!
The fact that you would do all of this while NOT believing in it is truly remarkable. What led you to being some interested in these fields?
What is reverse imposition from tulpamancy? I have only dabbled around tulpamancy, what is your experience with it?
I hope in your endeavor to cross the bridge between the hard sciences as we know them today and the untamed world of beyond can be helped in some small way by my experience:
As someone who regularly (especially in the past, not much for a year or three but slowly slowly slowly getting back into it) has been involved with this sort of stuff to various depths I can say that, unfortunately something seemingly irrelevant and sappy like a lack of faith absolutely can make a difference. “Magick” or whatever big umbrella term we want to call it has always worked best for me when I 1) believed in it and myself, 2) when I was doing it for benevolent/benign purposes (however this might be related to the Abrahamic-like questionably existent entity from which I draw my belief and thus power), 3) when I was clear (e.g. not on “the bullshit,” be it socializing or technology or ego or fear etc.) and 4) when…well when “it felt right,” I can feel it in my bones and the times I have tried to “force it” outside of the “right time” I have often failed, which I feel like relates heavily to #3.
Also, from my past experiences, I would say that something like the trials you are conducting would work much better if the “RNG” was a living being, particularly someone you have a very deep emotional/spiritual/etc. connection with, although I can appreciate that doing this with a machine will lead to much more usable, undeniable, clean results. I believe everything you are doing is absolutely possible to achieve through the M.O. you are using–not only possible but very valuable to us as an entire species and culture–but that due to its very nature it will be extra extra difficult with these methods.
Meditating before your trials is definitely one method that I am not surprised would help, with the added benefit of it not being totally “woo-woo” and thus not tainting your results, such as more extreme, socially unaccepted, personalized methods might. I have never tried sensory deprivation for several reasons (mostly circumstance) but I agree that that would also be an excellent option to explore.
Would love to hear more!!!
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As a pracitioner of Sanātana Dharma, I meditate daily, it has helped me tremendously in avoiding stress, anxiety, and helps me feel more connected to everything around me and to the people in my life.
