The Buddhists definitely know about this, but a lot of their writing is pretty impenetrable and interlaced with weird metaphysics. Here's some modern, secular words on the subject (from the admittedly controversial author Daniel Ingram):
https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight...
Here's a more traditional buddhist description of the same thing:
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/mahasi/progress....
I think a very small fraction of people actually meditate enough to get to that point. Meditating 90 minutes a day (plus the constant mindfulness practice) is pretty extreme by most people's standards (at least in US secular culture).
After that, for months, the head pressure / headaches would reappear and then they'd be relieved by me crying. Feeling the intense feelings and going away.
But... I really wasn't expecting any of that. I just wanted to be able to focus better and think more clearly. I didn't sign up for THIS. So I just let it go and fade. I didn't really want to accidentally screw my brain up. So, unfortunately, I haven't started a daily practice again since. It all did feel pretty cathartic though.
I've dabbled here and there with meditating again. When I do it with any real regularity though, the head pressure tends to come back.
Also, I'm not very fond of taking the traditional advice so literally. These sources focus solely on training new Buddhist monks, and most people doing secular practice just want some peace of mind while they continue their, productivity focused, western lifestyle.
We need to take these sources with a grain of salt and reorient our practice so that it cultivates more peace of mind without making us implode when the cultivated buddhist mindset creates a conflict with our western lifestyle
I agree that the goals of Buddhism contradict the goals we have in western society though. That said, Steve Jobs was a devout Zen Buddhist, so he sat many thousands of hours of zazen
I do find it funny though when companies train their employees in mindfulness. It’s almost like they want workers who have less emotional connection with their work. As I said elsewhere, it’s all a matter of whether you follow the instructions. If you do, it will have adverse effects.
Looks like mindfulness to 15 or 20 minutes a day is a sensible choice then.
> Steve Jobs was a devout Zen Buddhist, so he sat many thousands of hours of zazen
Steve Jobs was a powerful and a very influential man. He didn't have a boss urging him to be productive 24/7 like a field employee has. Investors expected his company to deliver working products. And it delivered all of that.
> I do find it funny though when companies train their employees in mindfulness. It’s almost like they want workers who have less emotional connection with their work. As I said elsewhere, it’s all a matter of whether you follow the instructions. If you do, it will have adverse effects.
IMHO they want their employees to become stoic productivity machines that make no demands and cope with whatever shitty working condition they set up.
I've experienced intense emotional swings like you describe but not the pain or pressure. The emotional swings at least were something I was able to get through, eventually. They were strong for a while but stopped with continued practice. I'm definitely still more sensitive than I was before. I feel both positive and negative feelings more intensely, but hold onto them less.
One big takeaway I had was realizing that outside the west, these types of things are well known. Here though, it seems almost no one who purports to be a "teacher" knows much about them or what to do with them.
This and linking MCTB (of all things) are the exact dangerous taking out of context I’m warning against. Daniel Ingram is a terrible resource, he should not be recommended
Here's where I think we differ: a lot of people in secular western culture are intensely put off by all the religious stuff that comes with Buddhism. The metaphysics and reincarnation stuff is, in my view, a reflection of the culture that Siddhartha Gautama grew up in and taught in, rather than a necessary part of eliminating suffering. I think that retelling these lessons in a way that's accessible to modern audiences is important. Some people simply will not accept something taught in the form of ancient mysticism. Should those people be denied insight just because they didn't grow up in India during the Iron Age?
I get that Ingram is polarizing. I'll add a link to Mahasi Sayadaw as well, but I just don't think he explains things in a way that's as clear to someone with my cultural background.
Of course the teachings must be made to appeal to westerners. This does not mean totally gutting them
People who won’t accept anything spiritual or religious don’t need this practise. In Buddhism we don’t try to convert, for some people it is simply not their time
The illusion of self can be observed directly. Perhaps it's even an inevitable conclusion of sufficiently intense introspection. I'd consider observing this to be a spiritual practice.
The metaphysics of realms of reincarnation, hungry ghosts, etc. is religious thought (and it was the dominant worldview when Siddhartha was born). These are not ideas that I can discover independently through introspection; if I believe them it's because someone told me to.
We might be talking past each other, though: if you're saying that the benefits of meditation are inherently inextricable from a Vedic worldview, I don't agree. But if you are just saying we haven't yet figured out which parts of the religion are actually necessary, then I agree. I personally learned meditation in a fairly Buddhist context, and naturally there are parts that resonate with me and parts that don't.
Then he has this book that is supposed to distil all of the powerful insight practises into a secular path, but everyone I’ve spoken to in his pragmatic dharma community is extremely toxic. It’s literally like the 4chan of Buddhism, huge amounts of racism, lots of depressed teens, very online, lots of people who think they are enlightened (one of which suddenly “rated my capacity for awakening” as zero, and when I said I didn’t care flew into a rage)
It’s exactly what you expect to happen when you take Buddhism, try and condense it down into a path for having the strongest and most intense experience, and market it to terminally online young adult men
Ingram was also heavily involved in this “fire kasina” stuff where you just stare at a flame for days until you start seeing things and go kind of crazy, which is a controversial practise in Buddhism
Finally he’s just not a qualified Buddhist teacher
For what it's worth, Ingram himself recommends Kornfield's "A Path with Heart" as one of his favorite books, which is largely about how the goal is to be a better person and that's not the same thing as developing incredible concentration abilities and having intense experiences.
