NEW232Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Buddhist Meditation, Samatha, Habituation
Document Summary
Essence of buddhist mindfulness meditation: serenity -- calm your mind, insight -- gaining an understanding of the real nature of phenomena. Insight is the key to liberation and is unique to buddhist meditation. Full catastrophe living : left out the 8-fold path, there is an unrealistic media hype around mindfulness and mindful people, this projects craving, idealizations, etc. 7 practices you must have to benefit from mm: acceptance, neither rejecting nor accepting mental states. Patience: leave room for experiences to unfold in their own way. Speculated mechanisms by which mindfulness alleviates suffering: habituation, leads to desensitization. Aha moments: learning to hold our thoughts and feelings lightly. Self management: forethoughts, more vigilance, relapse prevention, self observation lets us detect troublesome cognitive processes early on. Relaxation: mindfulness often produces relaxation through the practice of tranquility or concentration meditation. Acceptance: counter the natural tendency to reject undesirable subjectivity and cling to desirable subjectivity.
