Absolutely must sub when I read this, “I finally got started on my book for March, 'Norwegian Wood' by Haruki Murakami, and I'm loving it.”
I’ve read several Murakami novels and am a big fan.
Have almost certainly played a decent number of hands vs you as well as I’ve been playing mostly 50-100z/r the last year.
Looking forward to watching your thread. Gl man.

Thanks, glad to have you on board!

I've got a few more Murakami on the shelf that I'm going to get through soon. I think Norwegian Wood is probably the book I've enjoyed the most so far this year.

Good luck at the tables

April 2021 - Results

Just a short post with monthly and yearly results. As I mentioned, I didn't play much volume!







2021 Year to Date - Results

Week 18

Another short update for this week. Haven't played a hand of poker this month but other aspects of life have been going well. I expect the low volume will continue until mid-June when my exams finish. Finished the book on Buddhism and now reading another Murakami - 'After Dark'. Thanks for following

Goals
[x] Sleep
[x] Meditation
[x] Exercise
[x] Reading
[-] Poker Study
[-] Poker Volume

[-] = incomplete
[x] = completed

Week 19

I'm going to put this thread on a brief hiatus as I'm not very involved with poker at the moment. I'll probably pick it up again in mid-late June when my exams have finished and I'll start by setting some poker goals and challenges.

See you then!

Goals
[-] Sleep
[-] Meditation
[x] Exercise
[x] Reading
[-] Poker Study
[-] Poker Volume

[-] = incomplete
[x] = completed

In the spirit of this sub-forum, I'll revive this thread by consolidating my goals and setting myself a challenge.

Poker Goals
When it comes to poker, I think that my goals can be split into three main categories:

• Continuous improvement: By maintaining a growth mindset and studying effectively, I aim to improve my abilities in all facets of the game.
• Testing my limits: By setting myself challenges and getting out of my comfort zone, I aim to find my limits and then to push them further.
• Engaging with likeminded people: By being an active member of the community, such as writing this blog, I aim to connect with likeminded people and build positive relationships.

Poker Challenge
With these goals in mind, I'm setting myself a warm-up challenge to get back onto the online felt with an objective in mind:

1. Win 20BIs at 25nl
2. Win 20BIs at 50nl
3. Take shot at 100nl

For additional motivation, I will set myself an ambitious deadline of 1st August 2021 to complete the first step, winning 20BIs at 25nl. I think that is within my means but certainly not guaranteed which will hopefully make it more exciting.

I will update regularly going forwards. Thanks for following and gl on and off the tables

First 4.5k hands







Update

In the last three and a half weeks, I've not played very much poker. After finishing exams, I set myself the warm-up challenge to provide motivation to play my best every session. I was expecting to be excited to get back to the online felt and pour a significant portion of my free time into poker. Unfortunately, this has not been the case and I have not felt excited to play at the moment. While I've enjoyed some of the sessions I played, others felt forced and often I felt like I was trying to convince myself that I did still enjoy playing poker. I'm clearly not going to complete the first milestone of this challenge and I have decided to remove any time frame from my goals.

I don't think that this is the end of my poker journey but I also do not expect to be playing significant volume in the near future. I will continue to see how I feel and allow myself to throw myself back into the game (or not) naturally and without pressure. On the same note, I doubt that this will be my final post on this thread but I also doubt that I will be posting with regularity for the foreseeable future. I hope that anyone who has followed thus far has enjoyed reading and good luck to you all on your poker journeys!

Hey, sad to read.

I mean, yeah, if you have other life stuff going on and you'd rather be out doing fun non-computer stuff then I grant you, poker, and particularly, grinding internet poker for long thankless hours can't be that appealing. No doubt you have other interests worthy of your time. But that said.... and no offence, this was kind of an ill-judged challenge to get your feet wet after a break, no? I know you're good but anticipating a swiftish grind up the ranks can be 50/50 even at micro levels (ask Charlie Carrel) and it's clearly demotivated you.

My prescription: do whatever you like (of course!). No, I mean, yes, do whatever you like. But as you said poker wise go easy on yourself and try and tap into the magical things that made you love the game to start with. Theory, spectating, playing higher where the money counts, playing lower and experimentally LAG, whatever. Take a longer break. Play socially. Don't worry about anything. It'll be good either way.

Hello friend, thanks for dropping into the thread - I really appreciate the message.

I agree that the challenge I set was ambitious and had a significant chance of failure even if I played my best and put in reasonable volume. I also think your prescription is spot on, I've really enjoyed a couple of study sessions and general conversations with poker friends over the past month and I'm sure I'll continue to enjoy the problem solving part of the game going forwards. I think you particularly hit the money here:
Thanks for the kind words and good luck on your journey!

Hey everyone, I thought I'd come back to this thread to post a short update about recent events. Before doing this, I want to acknowledge the people who motivate me to keep coming back to this forum. If you are reading this thread then thank you very much for spending some of your attention on my story. In particular, there are a few members I'd like to highlight who I've spoken to outside of 2+2 and every single one of these people has proven to be a positive influence on my life. I'm incredibly grateful for the many coincidences that led to us talking and I hope you are all doing well in life!

25or3cardbrag - https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/554609/
haqpod - https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/487274/
BestToEverDoIt? - https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/558253/
Shipnickle - https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/546049/
bossman0161 - https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/492137/
VegasandtheMirage - https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/557787/
JohnCPoker17 - https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/members/499101/

I'd also like to thank the other 2+2 members who have replied to this thread. I'd like you all to know that there was no better feeling in this process than seeing an unread notification on my thread and I was happy to hear all of your inputs.
TRUSTtheDRAWCESS, Parsons Grinder, Ceres, BenaBadBeat, rayfox111, dsailor, TommyTsunami, XtraScratch8



In terms of poker, I'm continuing to follow this wonderful advice. Unfortunately for the thread, that means that I don't have much to update in terms of results. I'm playing entirely recreationally at the moment (though also competitively) and can't remember the last time I actively studied this amazing game. Instead, I've been consumed by starting my PhD over the last few months and I am thoroughly enjoying other aspects of life.

I hope that none of you mind this poker blog having little to do with poker at the moment. I think that many of my other interests will align with the members of this community and, more than anything else, I really enjoy sharing my journey in this environment. Thank you again to all of you for coming along for the ride!

===========================
MEDITATION RETREAT - PART 1
===========================
Introduction

A few days ago, I returned home from my first ever meditation retreat. It was a ten-day Vipassana course in Herefordshire (UK) consisting of 10.5 hours of meditation each day. With intense highs and severe lows, it was an incredibly rewarding and challenging experience. Please find the website link below.

https://www.dhamma.org/

I first tried meditation around three years ago during my undergraduate degree. Since then, I have been on-and-off meditating with many breaks and little consistency, though this has been improving with time. My first experience of meditation was with the Headspace app and then, at the start of 2020, I began using the Waking Up app for both guided meditations and theory content. Before going on the retreat, I was averaging 20 minutes of meditation per day, around five days per week.

As a stark comparison, below is the timetable for the meditation retreat.



To paint the full picture, I’ve also picked out the rules for the retreat which I think are most impactful.



Reflecting on my experience, I’m glad to have done it and grateful to have had the opportunity. Firstly, I am fortunate to have benefitted from the service offered by the Dhamma Dipa centre, and secondly to have the freedom in life to easily take ten days away from work. I wouldn’t describe the retreat as fun or even relaxing, but it was certainly calming, worthwhile, and extremely novel.



Anapana

For the first three days of the retreat, we practiced Anapana meditation. This is characterised by paying close attention to your breath, in particular the sensations on your nostrils and between your nostrils and upper lip. To begin with, I could barely feel my breath in this area and had to breath forcefully to generate sensations. As I practiced, however, my concentration improved and I was able to feel sensations more and more easily.

Much like a gym session before sports training, the purpose of these three days was to improve our mental fitness so that we could effectively engage with the upcoming Vipassana meditation. Concentration can be refined in a few ways. When meditating, you will inevitably become distracted by thoughts or other sensations and after a while you notice that you are no longer paying attention to your breath. With practice, the time it takes for you to notice that you have been distracted decreases. I also think that the frequency of these distractions decreases, but it could equally be the case that things arise just as frequently but you are less often consumed by them. Furthermore, your concentration also becomes sharper allowing you to notice subtler and subtler sensations on the body. This really does feel like you are able to notice something about reality which you were previously neglecting.

Below is a picture of the hall in which we were meditating.



While the practice was going swimmingly, on day two I started to feel the drawbacks of undertaking a silent retreat. I love people. I love talking to those close to me, I love getting to know people better, and I love meeting new people. Caught up in the novelty of the situation on day one, these deprivations didn’t really hit home, but it only took one more day for me to start to notice my isolation.

It started with just a small longing to talk to my dearest loved ones and then evolved into a deep hunger for any and all social interactions. In the mid-afternoon, I snuck off to my room to have a cry about it. Despite my sadness, this was a very wholesome moment as I could feel the intimate connection between my current despair and my love for the people in my life. On that afternoon, I made a few mental commitments to distribute some compassion at the end of the retreat which helped me feel a lot better.



To be continued...

Good to hear from you again, Ceres advice is spot on.
The meditation retreat you did is way out there, I dont think I could get close to completing that.
My life advice is to concentrate on what your good at and enjoy the most.
Personally I've had too many interests, with the outcome of being the 'master of none'.

Sounds like some more good advice, thanks for sharing! There's definitely a balance to be found between breadth and depth, but it's all about practice, not perfection.

===========================
MEDITATION RETREAT - PART 2
===========================

When registering for the retreat, the many hours of meditating each day was by far the most daunting component. However, when I arrived at the centre, a thought struck me: “What do I do during the breaks?”. Of course, there will be some time spent eating and showering but other than that I have no books, no pen, no paper, no phone, and no-one to talk to.

Fortunately, the Dhamma Dipa centre in Herefordshire covers a sizeable plot of land including a small wood behind the centre. Over the course of my stay, I got to know this wood very well from my many outings and even now I’d be confident in my ability to reconstruct the entire lay-out from memory. A full circuit took around 15 minutes (but you could stretch it out by walking really slowly) so it didn’t take long to explore every path and then each day was about finding new permutations for your route. I’ve included some pictures below.







Vipassana

On day four, we learnt Vipassana meditation, the focus of the course which we would be practicing for the next five days. Vipassana meditation involves paying attention to the sensations on your body. Much like Anapana, you start with a relatively coarse-grained attention, only noticing rather heavy or distinct sensations or large regions of the body. To refine your attention, you work across the body in patches trying to notice sensations only in the restricted area. Often you will not be able to feel anything or only feel significant sensations such as hard pain or pressure. As you continue to practice, you will start to notice subtler sensations across your body and this prompts you to reduce the size of your patches.

This growing awareness is one of the two key principles of Vipassana meditation. The other is equanimity. Equanimity involves developing a sense of calmness and stability in the face of disturbances such as discomfort or frustration. In some sense, you are building an indifference towards sensations, but I don’t think this captures it very well and can be easily misunderstood. A common concern I hear is that meditation is attempting to neutralise all emotion, happy and sad, and become entirely unfeeling. I believe that there is some truth to this claim but the conclusions drawn are inaccurate. When you think of someone as being “unfeeling”, I think there is a tendency to imagine a state of unstimulated boredom or disinterested nihilism. From my experience, this doesn’t align with the goal of meditation, at least not in the techniques I’ve tried.

The key observation underlying meditation is that we have a tendency to be dissatisfied with our states of mind. If we are sad or in pain, we are dissatisfied because we want this feeling to stop. If we are happy, there is a part of our mind that is clinging onto this sensation, dreading it’s departure. Fundamentally, this departure is inevitable in both cases. No thoughts, emotions, or sensations last forever and we only believe them to survive if they are being constantly reborn. In meditation, this phenomenon is referred to as impermanence. For example, I’m sure you will all be familiar with the feeling of being intensely frustrated with something that has happened to you earlier in the day and then being distracted by someone telling a joke. Momentarily, you forget to be angry and are consumed by laughter and joy. If, moments later, you again descend into frustration, it should be clear that this is not the same frustration that you were feeling before, but a new frustration which you have manifested by bringing the earlier events back into your mind.

The point I am making here is that we often attribute our internal mental state to external factors in the world. Even more than this, we attribute them to events which aren’t even in the world right now, but either occurred in the past or we predict may occur in the future. We put all of our efforts into modifying these circumstances with the hope that it will cure our internal struggle and provide everlasting bliss. The claim of meditation is that there is another game to be played. At the beginning, I noted that, whether happy or sad, we have a tendency to be dissatisfied. Vipassana meditation seeks to modify this tendency with deliberate practice. By paying vivid awareness to sensations in your body, you develop an experiential understanding of the aforementioned impermanence. Watching sensations repeatedly arise and, without any need for intervention, pass away, you work against the habit of developing dissatisfaction and foster a habit of intrinsic satisfaction with the present moment, independent of your emotions. This is what I understand by equanimity, learning to accept the present moment as it is.

I’ve taken a slight detour from the story of my retreat but I hope it has given a more accurate picture of what I was doing. I think that some people do not take up meditation because they have the impression that it is impractical and removed from real life, or that it is fundamentally spiritual and religious. Hopefully I’ve given some indication that meditation survives without any dogmatic or metaphysical beliefs, and one of the primary goals is to live a more fulfilled life.



Quitting

Getting back to the story of my retreat, on day five my motivation went through the floor and I told my teacher I wanted to quit. The problems started in the late morning when I was planning the continuation of my meditative journey after the retreat. There were aspects of the teachings that I thought made a lot of sense but there were also components which didn’t make sense to me and I didn’t want to accept blindly. On the foundation of these doubts grew a greater and greater concern about whether this course was a good use of my time and efforts.

It didn’t take long for me to become entangled in my own web of thoughts and this sapped me of all motivation. In this mental state, I found it impossible and the entire afternoon session of 1pm - 5pm was entirely unproductive. That was when things really started to turn sour. Having doubts about whether you want to continue the practice after the retreat is one thing, but spending four hours sitting in a dark room growing steadily more frustrated at yourself for being completely unable to do the only thing you came here to do certainly did not help my mindset. I came out of that session convinced that I would be wasting my time to stay here for five more days and went to talk to the teacher.

Now, while I was certainly in a terrible mindset, I also knew that I had chosen to come on this course and I didn’t want to quit lightly. I had a 30 minute conversation with the teacher during which I outlined my concerns about the course and listened to his guidance. In hindsight, he made many good points but the truth was that I’d already built up a tall wall around my new urge to quit. Any change would have had to come from within. At the end of our conversation, it was dark outside so he recommended I sleep on it and decide tomorrow morning.

I continued to mull it over all evening and I was very uncomfortable with the idea of quitting. I realised that simply quitting wasn’t a plan and if I wanted to be okay with the decision then I needed to come up with a new course of action. I still knew that I wanted to pursue meditation in my life, it was only the technique that I had started to doubt. I also wanted to do these intensive retreats from time to time and I’d chosen this one mainly because it was the largest and most popular centre in the UK. While thinking this through, I came to a realisation: if I know for sure that I want to try these experiences in my life, then how can I quit the very first one! This was enough to put me back on track and I had a good meditation session that evening which was a sorely needed boost to my mood and motivation. It’s striking to me now how quickly all of this process transpired. The emotional intensity of those few hours left its mark and it was a great lesson about how a bad mindset can lead me to adamantly believe things which I understand completely differently once I’ve calmed down.

The next few days went by much more smoothly and on the final day the noble silence ended and we had a chance to get to know all of the other meditators. This was a beautiful day and all of the people I spoke to were amazing. I’ve got no doubt that our mutual social starvation was a key factor, but everyone there was so friendly and compassionate to one another and extremely keen for conversation. The centre was buzzing with a truly novel atmosphere and I’ve got no doubt that my memories of the retreat have been shifted by those good vibes.

Thank you for reading and I wish that you are all happy.

Thanks for the shoutout, Leffy.

-

I found your write-up of the meditation retreat really interesting, especially the passage on equanimity. Regarding the benefit of such hardcore meditation I probably lean towards the "it's mostly hippy nonsense" side of the debate, but I think there can be real benefits to being reminded of certain basic things.

Also, the idea of your getting put on tilt and nearly rage quitting a meditation retreat did make me laugh, apologies.

Thanks for reading it and I'm glad it provided some entertainment!

Good to see you back and I'm glad you're working on things that should bring you peace, or happiness!

Thanks friend! I hope things are going well with you

Nice psychic jaunt Leth. I have given some thought to a med retreat in the past but oh yes, I think, esp after reading that, I would basically immediately go psycho and get tasered and locked up in the monk cells. Just like Bronson but with tunics and an embarrassing screaming coward.

I do think there's a lot to it also, so kudos for completing (esp after tilt/wobble). About 10 years ago I managed to keep a modest 10min morning practice going a few months in a row and I was out jogging around the park. It was a crispy winter morning but suddenly this incredible, warm + slightly unnerving ripple of tranquillity hit me like 250ug of acid. I remember thinking, mmm, ok, that is actually a bit special and weird. I therefore 100% agree that some of these states can be as powerful and drug-like as, well, we can't imagine and no doubt addictive and transformative (eventually) too. I think it works, but then so does psilocybin. Which is handy for lazy people. In an ideal world I would manage both.

I struggle with the ego side of it as i think you alluded to. Seems to be a ****ton of scripture to filter and adjudicate. Also, I think an innate part of my being will always believe unpredictable emotional anger is, in fact, a perfectly refined biological agent for change and not a bug to be squished or tamed or even disassociated from. Sometimes I genuinely find meditation makes me angrier and less patient overall. That might be teething pains, because I'm Welsh, or both.

What do you think of TM? I have yet to read a description of it that doesn't make it sound like some cynical cash grab. The basic machinery of it seems sound enough, give a bit of ritual for the memories etc. I looked up my mantra online but, meh, I still prefer the 'just think of nothing' plug 'n play style you can learn in about 5 mins on youtube.

Overall I do like the idea of conquering sequential realms/dharmas. Like a game, but it's everybody's eternal soul.

Imagine how smug that must feel.

Very interesting to hear your thoughts about meditation. I have done some myself WRT poker and other things but really struggle to not let my mind wander.

Best of luck in 2022! Hope you find yourself on the tables some more.

I think special and weird captures it very well. There is certainly a lot more that I'm looking forward to exploring.

-

I can definitely relate to getting frustrated when trying to meditate (as you can tell from my posts above). I'd like to propose a reframing of each of your points, please take them or leave them as it pleases you.


1) Anger is perfect, not a bug.
I actually completely agree with you. Anger and all other negative emotions are not problems to be solved. To me, the words you used "squished or tamed or even disassociated from" have connotations of suppressing the emotions or creating distance from them. In other words, you are either trying to push them out or push them down. I think both of these are natural instincts when faced with negative emotions - we feel an urge to get rid of them by reacting to them in one way or another. In my mind, meditation does the opposite. It is the act of paying attention to what is true right now, without judgement or reaction. In other words, you notice your anger or any other negative emotion and you accept it completely. The polar opposite of pushing it down or away, you welcome it as a truth about your mind right now.

In doing this, I think that emotions do lose their power in a certain sense but I don't think this is the same thing as having "tamed" them. If your emotions are wild animals, then taming them would correspond to breaking their natural instincts or locking them away in a cage. I think meditation is more like recognising that you're not in the jungle, you are playing an immersive virtual reality game. You've been so consumed by the game that you've developed fears and attachments towards these animals and you've come to believe that they pose real threats to your wellbeing. When you remember that it's all just a game, it no longer makes sense to react to these animals because you know that in some sense they are empty or without substance. In fact, once you realise that it is a game, it is easier to relax and enjoy the wild animals in all of their glory.


2) Meditation makes you angrier.
I think are two important things to be said about this. Firstly, whenever you try something challenging you are bound to face obstacles and this can be a frustrating experience. I don't think there is any reason to believe that meditation should be any different because it is certainly very challenging! One thing that I find helpful is reminding myself that I want to face obstacles because they imply that I'm attempting something genuinely out of my comfort zone. Failure is an essential part of growing so really I want to fail as often as possible! Of course, it is also good to give yourself plenty of wins along the way to keep yourself going.

Secondly, a more practical point when it comes to trying to meditate that also hits on the comment by TRUSTtheDRAWCESS.
When I sit for meditation, the majority of my time is spent being distracted by thoughts. This sea of distraction is punctuated from time to time with moments of awareness - moments when I remember that I am trying to meditate, recognise that I was just distracted, and bring my attention back to the object of meditation. These brief moments are the only times when I am really meditating. I used to get frustrated in these moments because they highlighted the fact that I had just been failing to pay attention for however long I was distracted. Now, I view them as the entire point of the practice.

It's like you are being swept along a river, thrown back and forth by the currents underwater. Then, from time to time, you break the surface and get a gasp of air. The entire point of meditation is to have these gasps of air more frequently and to stay above water for longer periods of time. So every time you realise that you have been distracted, the fact that you were able to realise it is a sign that you are making progress.

-

I don't know very much about TM but I'll list a few things that I'm not keen on.

• Anything that says you have to pay money to make progress.
• Anything that implies the ultimate goal is far away (i.e. you have lots of levels that you have to complete sequentially).
• The object of meditation being one consistent thing such as a mantra instead of the entirety of your experience.

I think there are pros and cons to lots of meditation practices and the best approach is to try lots and try to figure out for yourself which bits you like from each. Notably, the practice that works best for you will depend on what your goal is with meditation.

-

Thanks a lot Ceres and TRUSTtheDRAWCESS for the kind words and posting on the thread! Good luck in 2022

I hear you. More like a sort of stoic acceptance as much as any detachment; a structural method to reframe apprehension and hence facilitate a more fruitful perspective/response to said emotion. I do struggle with that response and meditation has definitely helped me 'get there' to a point of understanding/appreciating it quicker, and I think I at least partially understand how it works as a tool. As I say, i think it's an all round sound thing to build into your life, both as a practice and a method.

Perhaps I am being flippant as I only have a rudimentary understanding of this topic.

But I think this is the sort of problem I have with it.

I think, when all things are considered, we are in a jungle (natural selection operating on all levels; not just the obvious fight/flight directions, but deeply within our psychology [the selfish gene etc] and even affecting our most basic/rudimentary actions), and whenever we neutralise this impression (I would argue that acceptance of an emotion is not harnessing it's true power, but maybe this is a deeper argument), even only slightly, we risk blinding ourselves to other more pressing realities. To pick an obvious example, take the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s. Buddhist/Zen philosophies had very little to say -that was practical - about Hitler that would've saved us from tyranny (and indeed, as I understand some Buddhist sects even supported Japanese nationalism) . Ultimately we were saved by some very brave people willing to use their own bodies as missiles and shields, defending the right to be free and questioning individuals who could wear what they liked and to take the piss out of our leaders. Even get them replaced when we don't like them.

But I just don't get any vibe of an emergency plan B in Buddhism in the face of these kinds of very real threats. We are one perpetually hostile species/leadership that so often likes to indiscriminately kill parts of itself for horrifically facile reasons.

And that's before we get to our perilous cosmic geography. Little old us, spinning out into the harsh death pinball machine of space on this utterly defenceless and wobbling lump of earth, where total catastrophe could, and most certainly will, come hurtling out of the sky at any minute. I think the reality is there's nothing 'safe' about planet Earth. It seems to me that conflict (and the practice/refinement of conflict) is thoroughly baked in and, in fact, even demanded of us by the nature of our birth.



I worry that taking an incredible tool like meditation and applying it as if it were an overarching philosophy to govern our culture might ultimately be some kind of awful meta game theory mistake. Perhaps the counter to all this is that monks are human and there are many examples of Buddhism 'stepping up' to violence when it needed to. I'll accept that. But it does preach non-violence at it's core. Whereas I think we've been designed to, at least on a certain level, express it (as a way of knowing it), perhaps so that we may one day save ourselves from self immolation.

I think this makes sense. To get back to the point, I realise we're not trying to *not have* an angry emotion (intentional double neg ;p), but rather the trick is to learn to accept it and form a new perspective that isn't attached to that expression. I'm just sceptical that if we practice that awareness too readily, infuse too much harmony into the fabric of our psychology and being (or turn anger/frustration/grief into too much of an abstraction, a ghost of ourselves in the machine) we lose the capacity of self-knowledge to act effectively when it is actually in our interest to do so.


*********

To quickly take some of the rules of your retreat as an example of how I think this kind of contradiction plays out within the doctrine itself.

The permanent silence rule. Sounds at first like a fairly sensible way to break down thoughts and harmonise a cohesive atmosphere of introspection. Simple. Sounds reasonable. But it's also exactly what cult leaders do. And anything that's not voluntary is still a forced precondition, a sinister rule smuggled in under the pretense of you having made the false choice to go along with it to start with. If people can't speak to each other then nothing is ever questioned, ideas cannot be refined en masse, obedience is massively artificially amplified. The same goes with banning books/phones etc (ok maybe not phones, I love the idea of going somewhere without a phone tbh), but banning 'anything' that might lead to a practitioner questioning their reality (i.e. official region doctrine) just comes across like brainwashing to me. Which is in fact a key ingredient of fascism and just about anything horrible ever too.

I know that's an extreme way of looking at it, I just find it hard to accept it's necessary to be so strict about things. Especially if you're supposed to be taking a more relaxed position on life. From the outside it looks like they want you to hand over the keys to your whole body and mind just to get through the door and that's the same pattern most organised religion utilises to crush the human spirit. And they aren't exactly frontrunning the questioning mind and scrutiny either (which to me should be the #1 rule of any organised religious practice, and certainly never ever, even in the early stages, a crime or confined to tiny portions).


**********


Ah, I've thought of an even more spurious poker analogy! If Buddhism was a poker bot it would always be aiming for 0EV plays, which it would play perfectly every time. It could crush because it's calculating everything with 100% accuracy, but it never ever does because it's programmed to be motivated by equanimity and calculates purely for the thrill of making 'correct' decisions and nothing more. All well and good, but if you had to put your life savings on who would win heads up out of Buddhist super AI poker bot that had only ever practised/calculated 0EV play its entire existence up against a fully trained, out in the thick of it, battle harderned and constantly exploiting and adapting solver bot AI, I think we'd be crazy not to opt for the more experienced program. There's so much value in failure.

I hope some of that makes sense. I couldn't stop typing sorry, enjoying the discussion.

Wow! Thanks a lot for taking the time to write such a long reply - I really appreciate it.

I think you raised a lot of really great points and I certainly don't claim to have resolved all of these issues. In fact, I think that is essential to have these concerns in mind and foster a sceptical mindset so that you don't fall into traps related to dogma, doctrine, or brainwashing.

One comment which I think is important is that I wouldn't say I'm a Buddhist or subscribe to any other particular religion or belief system. Even within my meditation practice, I don't follow a single school and I'm actively looking to try further varieties with the hope of learning something from each of them. Saying that, the traditions of meditation which I have learnt about so far are said to have been passed down from the Buddha and his beliefs also formed the foundation of Buddhism so they are clearly closely related. I happen to believe that they are separable but untangling them is not always an easy task (hence the necessity for sceptical but also open mind).

=====

In your first section, you raise concerns about the practical application of equanimity. As I understand it, your core point is the following.

There are real problems in the world which we should attempt to solve and we are motivated to address them by our emotions. Equanimity is the practice of not reacting to our emotions so surely this will also lead to inaction in the face of problems.

In particular, the following two sentences stood out to me.
The reason I found these interesting is because they were particularly antithetical to the objective of meditation. I think your logic makes a lot of sense and these are very reasonable and sensible concerns to have, but it is somewhat amusing that the conclusion is that meditation may "blind us from reality" or that we may "lose the capacity of self-knowledge" when arguably the entire goal of meditation is to perceive reality more accurately and develop our capacity for self-knowledge. The truth is that I don't understand these things well enough to give a compelling rational argument against them but I can the anecdotal evidence that so far this doesn't match up my experience of meditation.

I'd strongly encourage you to explore for yourself with these concerns firmly in mind. Find out first-hand which parts of the logic survive and which parts don't align with your own experience. If you are on board with the benefits of becoming a novice or intermediate chess player, you don't need to worry about whether or not you want to be a grandmaster to start training! The important component is to always give yourself the freedom to change your mind. After all, this is an essential part of growing.

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In your second section, you talk about the rules of the meditation retreat. Again, I agree with everything you said. If you go there looking for a cult, you will certainly find a cult.

I think that all of the rules have their pros and cons and if I was running the centre then there are parts I would keep and parts I would change. On the other hand, I think it's important to have some sprinkling of humility along with the scepticism. It is essential to question the rules and figure out for yourself whether you think they are founded on good principles, but also remember that you might not be able to see the full picture just yet and some things that are hard to understand at the rational level can be understood more easily through experience.

In the example of the noble silence which you gave, I experience the benefits first hand - or more accurately the drawbacks of conversation. One of the ingredients which led to my mental turmoil on day five a conversation with the teacher in the morning. There was the opportunity to ask questions after lunch and you were encouraged to only do this when necessary. I ignored this advice and went with a few philosophical questions and a couple of practical ones, none of which really needed answering and it was more to sate my curiosity. In hindsight, I think that a significant motivator was just to talk to someone about what I was experiencing. In the afternoon sessions immediately afterwards, I was shocked at how much louder my mind had become from just a single 5-10 minute chat. This was one of the things that disrupted my concentration and helped to drive me down the tumultuous path I have described earlier.

Of course, this is only one small component of a single event but nonetheless I think it is a good example. As before, I'd encourage you to retain your scepticism and continue to doubt the utility of any rule that someone tries to impose upon you. On the other hand, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and allow yourself the freedom to change your mind in the future.

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Counter spurious poker analogy.
If meditation was a poker bot, it would have done a deep analysis of it's own game and would be completely aware of all of it's leaks. If it was playing poker, it would remain calm and measured even while exhibiting those leaks. Whether it won money or lost money, it would be satisfied with the outcome. If placed against a superior bot who had trained away more of it's leaks, it would surely lose but it would be satisfied with that loss. If it improved to the point that it could beat that bot and won the next match, it would be satisfied with that victory. If one of it's CPUs blew and it lost half of it's abilities overnight, it would be satisfied with it's remaining skill.

That was a lot of fun, thanks again for the inspiration!

Endboss Buddhist poker bot could remote view his opponent's cards. Not that it would ever cheat.

I agree, I do need to keep an open mind about it all and probably try something more serious that forces me to go through it for a few days. I'm fairly certain studying consciousness in this way has to be useful and good for a society morbidly addicted to dopamine. I'm mostly just venting what popped up when I started thinking about it.

That said:

If I was to characterise it, it would be more like: 'equanimity is the practice of not reacting to our emotions and thus...when the **** hits the fan it's not that we won't be able to get our **** together, we will, it's that when we do we still won't know how to respond to a hostile environment as effectively because it's a unique situation and we've just never been down this decision tree before with, for example, malfunctioning emotions'.

I think there's more value in experiencing the extremities in their fullness sometimes, when it's called for. I think the best diplomats have the best emotional intelligence, but that half of that emotional intelligence is about knowing when to display your own anger and frustration because, if nothing else, relationships are formed around such exchanges. Sometimes the equanimous(?) answer is the most intolerable to the oppressed.