
A practical guide for learning meditation through the art of gaming - prostoalex
http://qz.com/841877/learn-how-to-meditate-through-video-games-and-apps-such-as-flow-and-no-mans-sky/
======
aaimnr
The fact that meditative absorptions are a type of Flow experience (very
unique one, see below), doesn't mean that any Flow state is meditation. These
games may very well induce a flow state (as Flappy Birds can, if you're good
at it), but it doesn't make it meditation.

Here's a quote from Culadasa, a neurophysiologist and an adept meditator:

"What sets both Meditative Joy and flow apart from ordinary Joy is that it is
an internally generated state of mind, providing its own satisfaction
independently of external rewards.

What sets Meditative Joy apart from other forms of flow is that the flow-
inducing activity takes place entirely within the mind itself, and the skill
being applied is concentration, rather than concentration arising secondary to
the focused application of other skills."

The following handout he wrote about flow, meditation and meditative joy may
help appreciate the difference (see page 6 for dicussion on Flow):
[http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-
content/uploads/Meditation%20an...](http://dharmatreasure.org/wp-
content/uploads/Meditation%20and%20Joy%20Handout.pdf)

PS. I don't mean to say that these games are not useful, in fact knowing the
feeling of 'external flow' probably helps in learning meditation. Meditation
as a skill, however, has a better 'knowledge transfer' factor, meaning that
with time you can learn to sustain concentration while immersed in daily life
activities.

~~~
cJ0th
> What sets Meditative Joy apart from other forms of flow is that the flow-
> inducing activity takes place entirely within the mind itself, and the skill
> being applied is concentration, rather than concentration arising secondary
> to the focused application of other skills."

I am really not sure this is true. Here is a quote from Zen Mind, Beginner's
Mind:

> If you are concentrated on your breathing you will forget your- self, and if
> you forget yourself you will be concentrated on your breathing. I do not
> know which is first. So actually there is no need to try too hard to be
> concentrated on your breath- ing. Just do as much as you can. If you
> continue this practice, eventually you will experience the true existence
> which comes from emptiness.

So yes, you induce meditation by choosing (in your mind) to watch your breath
but that's no different from choosing to play a game. Furthermore you're
merely watching your breath, not controlling it. So it could be argued that
the concentration arises secondary like it does when you focus on a game.

But then again arguing takes places on a dualistic level, so what's the point
(in this specific case)?

~~~
mixermf
There is an important difference between meditating on a game and meditating
on your breath: meditating on your breath is boring --- and that boredom is
good for you. According to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche "Boredom is part of the
discipline of meditation practice" [1].

As for the relevance of arguing / debating: not everything is non dual (in a
manner of speaking). In Tibetan Buddhism this is reflected in the Two Truth
doctrine, where there are two levels of truth: relative and absolute. Absolute
is non-dual, whereas the relative is where we live our dualistic lives. Tibet
has a long history of debate.

[1] [http://www.lionsroar.com/chogyam-trungpa-on-cool-
boredom/](http://www.lionsroar.com/chogyam-trungpa-on-cool-boredom/) [2]
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-nichtern/boredom-as-
medi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-nichtern/boredom-as-
medicine_b_509917.html)

~~~
fsiefken
Thanks for your quote from Chogyam Trungpa, I am going through his lectures
with a former student of his. Great stuff.

------
white-flame
In my opinion, this is a failing of schools. Keep trying while figuring out
how to do it better is a culture of learning. Shuffling everybody through
without meaningful challenges and eliminating all indicators of relative (or
even absolute) performance, means kids aren't developed with a sense of self-
development, even if they do pick up some academic knowledge along the way.
This can easily cause people to become reliant on an unearned default
acceptance, confirmation, and praise from others.

Home life certainly has a lot to do with it, encouraging kids to get through
their homework (and homework itself is of arguable benefit), but the standards
and expectations of schools really set the underlying tone. We need to be
trained in overcoming challenges ourselves, with assistance and guidance where
appropriate, and with real consequences if we don't.

The fact that so many people hit adulthood without this basic self-determining
ability is apocalyptic.

~~~
ashleypt
Yeah the fixed mindset has really crippled me in my life. I was one of those
"gifted" kids (to be fair, I do have a pretty high IQ, but fixed mindset is
bad for high-IQ individuals too) and I couldn't even stick with video games
after awhile, always playing on the easiest difficulties. It's really taking a
long time to re-build my attention span and work ethic (ie. from just fiddling
around with a million little linux distros and languages, to really investing
in learning Android/Java like I am right now - one thing at a time)

For anyone who hasn't read it yet, or isn't familiar with these ideas of
praising effort and relative improvement over ability and talent, checkout
Mindset - it's a great book which I'm about half-way through right now:
[https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-
Dweck/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-
Dweck/dp/0345472322)

~~~
hosh
I had something similar. Martial arts and video games didn't quite switch it
on for me. There were wishful thinking on my part when I practiced those. At
some point, I learned to eat the suffering that comes with doing something
difficult. It came down to that. There is no avoiding the suffering. What
makes hard work "hard" is literally the suffering. Being able to be present --
being mindful -- to it is what makes it look like endurance, perseverance,
grit, "ren", "nin" on the outside. It looks stoic, like being indifferent to
pain, but it isn't. Being indifferent is a subtle way of avoiding the
suffering, while I'm speaking of being present to pain and suffering.

I learned that through a shamanic thing and cultivated it with meditation. My
ability to practice the things I wanted and take on challenges really
accelerated. (I got a taste for climbing up mountains, heh).

I also went to the other extreme where work became just an endless death march
of anxiety and stress. (If you can eat suffering, then you can just keep on
going, right?) That took reading a book on classical, non-dual Shaiva Tantra
and it's philosophy (it's View) before things clicked for me there. Up until
then, I had difficulty reconciling some things. I didn't want to lose being
able to work hard, but sustaining that was deteriorating things for my health
and my family.

~~~
ashleypt
for me, yeah, meditation and exercise has helped quite a lot because they both
directly reward and reinforce accepting struggle or challenge very shortly
after doing it and the effect builds through persistence. I don't like to call
it "pain" or "suffering" \- I think "strain" or "tension" is a much much
better to put it because you can strain to do something pleasant like when we
squint to try to see something better, or when we stretch to loosen up our
muscles. Describing it as pain or suffering isn't going to help anyone
standing on the outside of learned-helplessness - for a long time I associated
"hard work" with doing things just because you felt like you had to because of
that mindset and because of public schooling/being told what to do as a kid
and so I carried on that refusal into my adult life. It's taken a couple years
to learn that effort is fun /in the moment/ too if you /care/ about it - look
up flow states.

we tend to make things like exercise and so on into these grueling things that
we do as if out of this sense of duty. we don't really have to do anything -
we can never get out of bed and starve to death. nobody's going to judge us
for that, and if the only thing that makes you choose different is feeling
guilty then you need to find your motivation. for me, the less I judge myself
for not doing, often the quicker I get started. it's been tough to remember
that - I can still agonize with patterns like "analysis paralysis" and I have
to just stop, and go do something totally unproductive until my motivation
returns. It's kind of like diffused/focused thinking as applies to learning,
or anabolic/catabolic processes for weight lifting.

~~~
hosh
I'm specifically using pain and suffering because I am not talking in
metaphors and I am not trying to dress it up or down. I am not trying to
comfort myself or others, and I am not trying to ennoble this. I am not trying
to put lipstick on a pig. Pain is literally, physical pain sensations, no
more, no less. By suffering, I am speaking about dukkha, or existential
anguish.

When you try to make something into something else in order to make it more
pleasant, that is a form of a story in the head. It will work for awhile until
it doesn't. The whole point of mindulfness meditation is awakening to what is,
not what you wish things are.

It doesn't matter whether you are doing something you think is pleasant or
not, dukkha is present there. Strain and tension contains pain. Dukkha is only
there when someone is not mindful. Ironically, by being present to the actual
amount of pain, the dukkha lessens:

[https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-coolest-psychological-
tric...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-coolest-psychological-
trick/answer/Barnard-Law-Collier) (Quora answer, not mine's, that explains
this very well).

Learned helplessness is a story in the head. There are methods to dissolve and
deconstruct that which I will not mention here. When you replace that story
with a different story, you are creating the conditions for your next
disappointment. Real power and freedom comes from releasing the stories that
prop up your identity.

Now having said all of that, I had written about "supports" here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13091341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13091341)
... So long as those support help you in your practice, it's great. At some
point, those supports become obstacles themselves. They are, after all,
stories in the head.

> we tend to make things like exercise and so on into these grueling things
> that we do as if out of this sense of duty. we don't really have to do
> anything

If we don't have to do anything, then what is the point of living and
struggling? If you lose your motivation for living and struggling, then what
happens when you really need to make it through? This was the paradox that was
resolved for me with non-dual Shaiva Tantra.

~~~
ashleypt
>I'm specifically using pain and suffering because I am not talking in
metaphors and I am not trying to dress it up or down. I am not trying to
comfort myself or others, and I am not trying to ennoble this. I am not trying
to put lipstick on a pig. Pain is literally, physical pain sensations, no
more, no less. By suffering, I am speaking about dukkha, or existential
anguish.

I'm not trying to put lipstick on a pig either. I'm trying to explain very
real experiences I've had in a way that people who don't understand delayed
gratification (yet) won't misinterpret due to false definitions instilled in
their past.

>When you try to make something into something else in order to make it more
pleasant, that is a form of a story in the head. It will work for awhile until
it doesn't. The whole point of mindulfness meditation is awakening to what is,
not what you wish things are.

Okay, why are you responding to my comment with this? Did I somehow contradict
this notion?

>It doesn't matter whether you are doing something you think is pleasant or
not, dukkha is present there. Strain and tension contains pain. Dukkha is only
there when someone is not mindful. Ironically, by being present to the actual
amount of pain, the dukkha lessens:

Strain and tension don't necessarily contain pain. During physical exercise
the body releases a flood of endorphins (ie natural painkillers) that numb it.
I believe I've heard meditation does something similar. I can think of
numerous other examples of strain that doesn't contain pain - working really
hard to solve a puzzle, learning a new skill, or completing a really difficult
project. Flow state is when we have high strain and tension but a high sense
of efficacy and well-being.

>Learned helplessness is a story in the head. There are methods to dissolve
and deconstruct that which I will not mention here. When you replace that
story with a different story, you are creating the conditions for your next
disappointment. Real power and freedom comes from releasing the stories that
prop up your identity.

beliefs are just descriptions about reality that can be either true or false,
but we can indeed be fooled by false beliefs or become dependent on true ones
which may change in the future. I agree that equanimity is a great virtue
which can be cultivated through regular meditation. you don't have to
overcomplicate something by alluding to some mysterious methods which you know
but won't explain. you can break down false beliefs through mindfulness which
is the technique behind cognitive behavioral therapy. there is nothing wrong
with forming new positive beliefs as long as they are accurate and you
understand that reality is always changing and they may become false in the
future. you must maintain a regular practice of mindfulness if you want to
minimize false beliefs.

>If we don't have to do anything, then what is the point of living and
struggling?

There's no objective reason to live and struggle floating out in reality. They
are impulses generated within human beings through genetic, internal (ie
mental/cyclical), and environmental influences. If you don't have them, you
can try to cultivate them, if you don't believing that you "have to" do things
is a very hollow substitute.

>If you lose your motivation for living and struggling, then what happens when
you really need to make it through?

You find it or you die. This is self-evident, if this wasn't true, then
suicides wouldn't happen. You need to find a strong, positive, inner source of
this motivation and remain vigilant once you do or you will find half-ways to
slowly kill yourself - purposely getting in unhealthy relationships, acquiring
addictions or bad health habits, or overworking yourself.

>This was the paradox that was resolved for me with non-dual Shaiva Tantra.

I have no idea what paradox you're referring to. I'm not seeing one here. If
you think that we either objectively have to do things or there's no point in
living and struggling, that sounds like a pretty dualist concept to me. I have
no idea what the "shaiva tantra" is and honestly I think it's best for those
trying to find a way out of a dark place, as well as those trying to
understand these life principles, to abandon these cryptic terms and speak
simply or using well-established modern language. Isn't the point of
communication to transmit knowledge? You're doing a poor job when you use
obscure terms without defining them.

~~~
hosh
> Okay, why are you responding to my comment with this? Did I somehow
> contradict this notion?

Because I am doing something similar to when you say, " I'm trying to explain
very real experiences I've had ... " although I am not trying to explain about
delayed gratification. I'm trying to state a lot of things that come from
mindfulness meditation. Take stories in the head for example: You say,
"beliefs are just descriptions about reality that can be either true or false,
but we can indeed be fooled by false beliefs or become dependent on true ones
which may change in the future."

From my experience, any belief is always going to be false. No description of
reality can ever substitute for reality. There are no beliefs that inherently
exist or are inherently true. When you have a belief, that is something that
will always sit between what is present right now. When I say "stories" I do
not just mean beliefs. "Story" is a translation for a Sanskrit term with a
complicated pronunciation that I have not memorized. They are not just
referring to ones you know about. They also refer to these filters that,
often, people are not aware of. When it releases, there is a palpable, if
subtle, experience as if some guazy layer of perception had been removed. The
world gets a little bit clearer, and so does the mind.

When you use the word construction, "I prefer to call pain X", and your
explanation, "Strain and tension don't necessarily contain pain. During
physical exercise the body releases a flood of endorphins (ie natural
painkillers) that numb it." That is an example of what I'm talking about. The
pain is still present, even when numbed out. There is nothing wrong with pain
in and of itself. Pain does not need to be something to avoid, and if
anything, should be listened to as a guide for when you are pushing too hard.
People usually conflate pain with suffering, and try to avoid the pain because
the suffering is associated with that pain.

> you don't have to overcomplicate something by alluding to some mysterious
> methods which you know but won't explain.

I'm not overcomplicating this. From my perspective, people who carry a lot of
stories in the head look like they are overcomplicating things. I'm not being
mysterious. You cannot use another story to dissolve another story unless that
story itself self-dissolves. This is why people generally cannot talk their
way out of something, and the stories in head goes around in loops.

> You find it or you die. This is self-evident, if this wasn't true, then
> suicides wouldn't happen.

This is not true. Suicides do not happen because someone loses motivation to
live. It happens because someone wants to stop the suffering.

> I have no idea what paradox you're referring to. I'm not seeing one here. If
> you think that we either objectively have to do things or there's no point
> in living and struggling, that sounds like a pretty dualist concept to me.

I don't think you have come across this paradox in your experience yet.

> I have no idea what the "shaiva tantra" is and honestly I think it's best
> for those trying to find a way out of a dark place, as well as those trying
> to understand these life principles, to abandon these cryptic terms and
> speak simply or using well-established modern language. Isn't the point of
> communication to transmit knowledge? You're doing a poor job when you use
> obscure terms without defining them.

I am not using cryptic terms. I am using very precise terms that points to
specific experiences. I can talk about the emotions of "fiero", or "naches",
and those have no English equivalent, yet they are very real and precise for
Italian or Yiddhish speakers. No well-established modern language has a handle
on _dukkha_ or many of the things you might find in Vipassana. Those are
better taught with "pointing out exercises", where someone brings your
attention to something over and over again, as they arise.

Classical, transcendental non-dual Shaiva Tantra is a name for a specific set
of teachings coming out of medieval India. It is very specific, it is very
dense. If you want to read about it, the best book in English is Christopher
Wallis's Tantra Illuminated.

If I seem to be obfuscating though, it is because I am, and what I am hiding
takes more than one afternoon's conversation to cover. I do not mind talking
to someone about it, but it isn't as if I have the skill to condense all of
this into a tldr.

I'll try to condense some of it here: "Dark places" can be seen as a metaphor
for experiencing depression, despair, or learned helplessness. Much of it
comes from conditioning from the environment: parents, schools, and the way
the reward-punishment system is set up. However, there are other sources in
which one can enter into extended states like that. It might be inherited
ancestrally, even from someone not directly blood-related. It may be from past
lives. (Which, when you consider this frame with suicides, suicide is a
terrible mistake because it does not stop the suffering; someone who lost the
motivation to live finds that experience continue on eternally and cannot stop
it even when they want to). There may be hungry ghosts eating your mind space
like a zombie -- often indicated when you get arbitrary thoughts, such as
suicide, appear without precedence and it does not feel like your own patterns
of thoughts; the more successful hungry ghosts will make it seem like it is
your idea. Beliefs in learned helplessness can come from any one of these, or
even reinforced by more than one of these. What I included is not an
exhaustive list.

There are numerous methods developed to work with this. They work at different
layers or with different levels of understanding. Some are coupled to "local
color", that is, the specific set of cultural beliefs and values. The ones
that work all have one essential thing in common: mindfulness. That does not
mean that mindfulness alone will take you all the way -- well, it does, just
perhaps not as effectively. Some methods specializes in certain aspects of
this and can an address those aspects better.

So you are right: what you are trying to say when you impart skills and
knowledge like this will work for a lot of people. However, there may be other
things going on, and require a different way of addressing it.

~~~
hosh
Thinking more about this: you are right, I am not communicating any of this
skillfuly.

~~~
ashleypt
you have a lot of interesting thoughts and a depth of experience in these
subjects - if you could get better at the presentation aspect I think you'd
have a lot to offer people.

I come from more of a taoist background, when I read the tao te ching it
changed my life. I would see how he tries to present his ideas - vague,
contradictory, unprecise - as I think that is a much better way to communicate
these attitudes (ie the insights of meditation/awareness/secular
"spirituality") to most modern cultures today.

better than that, check out alan watts, he introduced much of eastern
philosophy to the west and he is probably my favorite public speaker of all
time, period. he makes everything sound profound and mysterious and yet a
meaningless joke at the same time - just like the ideas really are.

back to our "disagreement" \- I think we're just working from opposite
directions of the same core fundamentals (yin/yang, in other words) - your
approach is very rigid, precise, and ruthlessly blunt and honest. my approach
is more boiled down to essentials, focused on a roughly correct understanding
that will guide most people in the right direction over time, and forgiving -
flowing like water as a taoist might say.

the fact is, unlike in many western cultures and ideas (unlike stoicism, which
is arguably the western "version" of eastern thought and attitudes), there's
no contradiction between our approaches I think - they're more like two
different teachers where some personalities need your precisely rigid approach
and some might benefit more from a more taoist approach. Ultimately in my life
I've needed a bit of both but at different points - the strong harsh
ruthlessly honest self-discipline most recently, and the relaxed, intuitively
focused, flexible taoist approach when I was a stressed teenager.

I hope this helps make things clearer for anyone reading this as if reading a
debate.

------
hosh
In the meditation world, those are called "supports". They support your
practice. I'd consider things like, going to a quiet place, having a
meditation cushion or bench so you don't wreck your knees, bells, asceticism,
even mantra, are all supports. These games, when done well, are supports.

Eventually, you kick away the support when the support no longer becomes
supportive. By that I mean, you realize you are attached and relying on the
support, which forms an attachment -- a story. "This too shall pass."

In the meantime, enjoy the support, just don't confuse it for the practice.

------
acconrad
The research paper linked in the article essentially recommends only a few
apps that scored high enough to properly engage you into learning meditation,
and none of them appear to be games, but use gamification techniques:

* Headspace

* Smiling Mind

* iMindfulness

* Mindfulness Daily

~~~
DaveSapien
Yeah I noticed this also. Its a reoccurring theme in conversations I have with
nongamers that "respect" gaming, they really do respect it, but find it
difficult to get past the subject matter of the game and focus on the
gameplay. I'm hoping to tackle that with my new game. Basicly it looks
spiritual (it actually is to me) but offers fairly standard gaming mechanics.
Just hoping it might help people get beyond the subject matter and into what's
important about gaming...and be helpful in general for them.

~~~
hosh
I like to keep my eye on projects like this. Do you have a mailing list or a
twitter or something I can follow? Or would you mind elaborating on this more?

~~~
DaveSapien
Sure, I'm @DaveSapien. Please ignore the last few tweets about surveillance in
the UK. Everything else is about my work, I try not to clutter the stream up.
Its a game where you draw a (perfect) circle and avoid villains. Contact me on
Twitter and I'll set you up with a beta, almost at that stage.
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cxvo7HVWgAAqwOd.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cxvo7HVWgAAqwOd.jpg:large)

------
runevault
For getting deep focus, I've found recently returning to the game Bayonetta 2
has been great. Playing on Infinite difficultly forces me to get wrecked, ask
questions, and try again, slowly getting better as I go.

