Generalist software engineer with a broad range of experience including frontend, backend, and cloud infrastructure development. Past roles include full stack engineering at a YC-backed startup and VP of Engineering at a quantitative hedge fund.
What sets me apart? I have entrepreneurship experience that gives me an understanding of the end-to-end product development process at early stage startups. I am skilled at taking initiative on projects and turning vaguely defined requirements into concrete solutions. I am passionate about functional programming, engineering reliable and scalable software systems, and building engineering teams that consistently deliver quality results. I also speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).
Generalist software engineer with a broad range of experience including frontend, backend, and cloud infrastructure development. Past roles include full stack engineering at a YC-backed startup and VP of Engineering at a quantitative hedge fund.
What sets me apart? I have entrepreneurship experience that gives me an understanding of the end-to-end product development process at early stage startups. I am skilled at taking initiative on projects and turning vaguely defined requirements into concrete solutions. I am passionate about functional programming, engineering reliable and scalable software systems, and building engineering teams that consistently deliver quality results. I also speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).
Generalist software engineer with a broad range of experience including frontend, backend, and cloud infrastructure development. Past roles include full stack engineering at a YC-backed startup and VP of Engineering at a quantitative hedge fund.
What sets me apart? I have entrepreneurship experience that gives me an understanding of the end-to-end product development process at early stage startups. I am skilled at taking initiative on projects and turning vaguely defined requirements into concrete solutions. I am passionate about functional programming, engineering reliable and scalable software systems, and building engineering teams that consistently deliver quality results. I also speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).
Generalist software engineer with a broad range of experience including frontend, backend, and cloud infrastructure development. Past roles include full stack engineering at a YC-backed startup and VP of Engineering at a quantitative hedge fund.
What sets me apart? I have entrepreneurship experience that gives me an understanding of the end-to-end product development process at early stage startups. I am skilled at taking initiative on projects and turning vaguely defined requirements into concrete solutions. I am passionate about functional programming, engineering reliable and scalable software systems, and building engineering teams that consistently deliver quality results. I also speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).
I'm a Columbia University computer science graduate with past work experience ranging from full-stack software engineering at a Y Combinator startup to VP of Engineering at a hedge fund.
I currently provide software engineering consulting services including full-stack engineering, infrastructure, and cybersecurity consulting.
I speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).
I'm a Columbia University computer science graduate with past work experience ranging from full-stack software engineering at a Y Combinator startup to VP of Engineering at a hedge fund.
I currently provide software engineering consulting services including full-stack engineering, infrastructure, and cybersecurity consulting.
Also willing to consider full-time positions.
I speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).
I'm a Columbia University computer science graduate with past work experience ranging from full-stack software engineering at a Y Combinator startup to VP of Engineering at a hedge fund.
I currently provide software engineering consulting services including full-stack engineering, infrastructure, and cybersecurity consulting.
Also willing to consider full-time positions, especially ones related to LLM/LMM applications or BMI tech.
I speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).
I'm a Columbia University computer science graduate with past work experience ranging from full-stack software engineering at a Y Combinator startup to VP of Engineering at a hedge fund.
I currently provide software engineering consulting services including full-stack engineering, infrastructure, and cybersecurity consulting.
I also speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).
I'm a Columbia University computer science graduate with past work experience ranging from full-stack software engineering at a Y Combinator startup to VP of Engineering at a hedge fund.
I currently provide software engineering consulting services including full-stack engineering, infrastructure, and cybersecurity consulting.
I also speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).
I interpret the author’s difficulties and frustration as a byproduct of a particular misapprehension of Buddhist teachings in modern society. Many modern-day practitioners, both in the east and the west, are under the impression that simply by mechanically practicing mindfulness meditation they will eventually reach a state of enlightenment. Unfortunately, this is a misunderstanding that the Buddha himself addressed in the teachings. The Noble Eightfold Path is at the heart of Buddhist practice, and it’s structured such that “right view” comes in first place, while “right mindfulness” and “right concentration” come at the very end. According to these teachings, it’s impossible to attain the right kind of mindfulness conducive to the cessation of stress without first satisfying the precondition of right view. Without right view, the practitioner is essentially flying blind. The modern mindfulness movement in its zeal to secularize these practices is incapable of accepting the proposition that the right teaching has to be first grasped before embarking on the practice, as this contradicts the purely empiricist approach of mechanically practicing mindfulness with the expectation that this leads to enlightenment. The author’s comments such as “I thought awakening was right around the corner and now feel broken and betrayed” are indicative of such an expectation being broken. The Buddha explains the danger of misconceiving the teachings using the snake simile, in which the Buddha compares the teachings to a snake that has to be first grabbed by the head and then tail. Trying to grab the snake by the tail first will only result in being bitten. This simile can be applied quite literally to the structure of The Noble Eightfold Path, where right view can be interpreted as the head of the snake, and right mindfulness/concentration as the tail.
I've frequently seen "Buddhism" adopted by westerners from a secular or Judeo/Christian background and treated as though it's some sort of feel-good practice which lets them feel vaguely superior to other religions without any serious changes in beliefs or practices.
I saw a well regarded movie recently where the main characterized Buddhism as "a philosophy rather than a religion" which made it clear that no Asians had been involved in the making of that film. I was with a friend at a Asian market and he looked snottily at some of the Buddha statues and said "Those don't have any relationship with _my_ religion". I wanted to ask if they'd ever been in a Thai restaurant. It's such a dismissal of the way Buddhism has been practiced in cultures for a couple thousand years - but this white American clearly knows better.
Throughout Buddhist history, the contemplative, meditative, "philosophical" Buddhism has always been practiced by a small minority of monks and nuns. Even at the height of Buddhist fervor in the middle of the first millennium, far under 0.5% of the population of, say, China were monastics. (In fact most of those simply had certificates of monkhood that exempted from corvee labor - taxes in the form of labor, and weren't seriously committed to spiritual practice.)
Most Buddhists have been lay followers content to pray at temples to ease their worries and bring good luck, seek the monastics for ceremonies like weddings and funerals, and donate to monasteries to keep their spiritual practices going. The whole of Mahayana Buddhism is far more concerned with the worship of spiritual intercessors called Bodhisattva's, those who have achieved enlightenment but have chosen to stay behind to help devotees. This form of Buddhism constitutes the bulk of religious practice in East and South East Asia. To ignore it in favor of only one strand of Buddhism is like seeing Christianity only through the eyes of Flagellants or Dominican monks or anchorites.
The source of the conflict is that when most people in the US say “Buddhism”, they mean “Buddhism that was exported to the US in the 60s.” which was an odd combination of monastic and secularized. It’s actually a strange combo when you think about it. Most Buddhists are more like Americans on Easter Sunday.
I'm confused by this comment. Do you mean to say that Buddhists ought to engage in religious flame wars? FWIW, Buddhism is fairly centered on self-improvement, with idolatry being generally seen as respectful reverence, or at worst as lucky charms.
I don't see the problem in taking just the teachings of a belief system while ignoring the idolatry aspect. In fact, some western takes on religion could use less idolatry.
That's one aspect central aspect of some types of Buddhism, but compassion is also central in many forms of Buddhism, particularly in the Bodhisattva traditions and teachings of the Mahayana branches of Buddhism, where the goal of self-improvement is sacrificed for the sake of easing the suffering of the rest of humanity.
Community (the Sangha and the lay people and every other sentient being) is also very important to many forms of Buddhism, and many Buddhists are socially active or at least engage in charitable works which are as much about helping others as anything else.
That's not to mention the selflessness and the giving up of attachment to goals like "self-improvement" at higher levels of Buddhist practice that is also emphasized in some forms of Buddhism.
"idolatry being generally seen as respectful reverence, or at worst as lucky charms"
There's lots of idolatry throughout the real practice of Buddhism around the world. Lay Buddhists in particular (on whom monastic Buddhists are so dependent, and without whom monastic Buddhism would would largely cease to exist) often pray to the Buddha for protection, luck, cures and wealth, and worship various gods and spirits. This is all Buddhism to them, and Buddhist monks are not free of such beliefs either.
In Tibetan Buddhism belief in gods and magic is widespread, as it is South East Asian Buddhism. Buddha is effectively treated as a god in Pure Land Buddhism, where he is prayed to for salvation and in hopes of being reborn in what is essentially paradise.
Claims that Buddhism as a whole is secular, atheist, not idolatrous, "scientific", etc, are not credible. Sure, some forms of Buddhism are (particularly the kinds that have been created for Western consumption), but many others aren't.
> Buddha is effectively treated as a god in Pure Land Buddhism, where he is prayed to for salvation and in hopes of being reborn in what is essentially paradise.
I knew of Buddha being prayed to (mostly for luck) and of prayer for salvation separately, but not both simultaneously, that's interesting. I was personally exposed to prayer rituals for deceased family members, but my understanding is that the prayers aren't directed at Buddha per se, it's more seen as the act of praying itself helping to open a path to everlasting peace or something like that. IMHO, this is several degrees removed from the original teachings though, similar to how there are multiple abrahamic denominations with various degrees of "quirks".
I'm also aware of some historical conflicts branched off of some of these "interpretations", hence why I tend to look for historical common ground between buddhism flavors.
I think it is pure ignorance to call Buddhism a "philosophy rather than a religion" and sneer at idols. You might as well sneer at a display where a round, black-and-white ball is called a 'football'. It shows a complete lack of knowledge about any form of Buddhism practiced anywhere outside of your little world view
So, for a bit of perspective, as a child, I was mostly exposed to the ritualistic aspects of buddhism, which is probably the closest experience to what a westerner thinks of when thinking of "religion". Do I think that people prioritizing mindfulness to de-stress and calling it Buddhism are kinda missing the point, sure. Do I get offended that they aren't aware of the existence of things like buddhist prayers, for example? No, not really. Honestly, assuming that "bastardizing" buddhism would offend people like me seems like needless SJW-ness for its own sake, especially considering Buddhism has already been bastardized to the wazoo throughout history. </two-cents>
I didn't mean to call you one, sorry if it came out that way. Personally, I just tend to see this the same way I see grammar nazis (in the context of language being a malleable construct over time)
"Do you mean to say that Buddhists ought to engage in religious flame wars?"
We have engaged in far worse than flame wars. Buddhists have fought in actual wars at various points of history and done other not so great things. For example, D.T. Suzuki is known for his writing on Zen Buddhism but he was also something of a right-wing nationalist.
I think GP is advocating that we approach Buddhism in its whole form rather than just the bits and pieces we are most comfortable with.
Buddhists are currently engaging in the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar. No philosophy is beyond being subverted to evil, and ascribing to a particular philosophy will not protect you from doing evil.
I don't understand the mention of "Judeo/Christian background"[0] or the invocation of race where religion is concerned (cultural is downstream of religion, anyway), but in any case, it is true, based on what I have read, that "American Buddhism" as practiced in the United States is sort of a consumerist ethos dressed up in Buddhist garb. The case is similar where Hinduism is concerned. The phrase "I am God" coming from the mouth of a traditional Hindu means something different than it does coming from an American who has immersed himself in a kind of Hindu-coated consumerism. The latter is sort of a pantheistic claim, at least theologically, while the latter is likely the expression of consumerist egoism.
[0] Btw, I would suggest using "Christian" or "Jewish or Christian" instead of "Judeo-Christian". There are important incompatibilities between post-Christian Talmudic Judaism and Christianity (itself fractured) that cannot be glossed over with a hyphen.
Thank you for pointing that out, it is an unfortunate shorthand and I should stay away from it. I tend to use it as a hand-wavy way to say "fair-skinned Americans who probably celebrated Christmas or Hanukkah growing up" but I'll stop.
Buddhism always had a lifestyle aspect to it in the West. We have benn in Ladakh once, for the monastery festival season. There we also witnessed a procession around one the holy mountains. The monastery festivals were quite touristic, especially the ones in famous locales. This procession was a purely local thing, besides my parents and myself there was another tourist couple. The people there measured, above 3,500 meter over sea level, heat and dust the distance of the route in their body length for a full day. That quashed any illusions I might have had about Buddhism being an "easy" religion.
Also the people their were just sincerely nice. I didn't want to bother them, keep a distance during their break. 20 minutes later I had lunch with them.
Why villainize the "white American", portraying them as "knowing better"? Yes, the mischaracterization of Buddhism is disrespectful, but it comes from ignorance, not malice.
It is ignorance that borders on arrogance. They must know that Buddhism is over two thousand years old. They must know that it is central to many cultures all over the world. Yet they somehow are confident that their way is the 'right' way.
"I was with a friend at a Asian market and he looked snottily at some of the Buddha statues and said "Those don't have any relationship with _my_ religion"."
"I saw a well regarded movie recently where the main characterized Buddhism as "a philosophy rather than a religion" which made it clear that no Asians had been involved in the making of that film."
Asians are as capable as anyone else at secularizing Buddhism (or of doing anything else, really).
Take the example of D T Suzuki[1] himself -- the man who is arguably more responsible than anyone else for bringing Buddhism to the West.
"In the mid-20th century, Japanese lay scholar D. T. Suzuki was instrumental in creating a Zen which would be acceptable to Westerners, a project undertaken to position post WWII Japan as a modern, powerful nation and its culture as refined and superior in the face of Western hegemony. Suzuki sought to remove Zen from its historical and cultural context and make it accessible and applicable to everyone. This extraction cut its ties to monks and monasteries, the precepts, sangha life, rituals and teachings, and set up instead the individual internal experience of awakening as the only reliable "truth." Positioning Zen as based on the truth of personal experience protected it from rejection as superstition or as a creation of a bewildered community. At the same time, it could not be replaced by science or rationalism because the awakening experience was said to be subjective and ineffable. It was beyond all the limitations of organized sects, cultural manifestations, or political exigencies. As Robert Sharf explains,"
"The notion of "pure Zen"--a pan-cultural religious experience unsullied by institutional, social, and historical contingencies--would be attractive precisely because it held out the possibility of an alternative to the godless and indifferent anomic universe bequeathed by the Western Enlightenment, yet demanded neither blind faith nor institutional allegiance. This reconstructed Zen offered an intellectually reputable escape from the epistemological anxiety of historicism and pluralism."[2]
"Several scholars have identified Suzuki as a Buddhist modernist... Buddhist modernist traditions often consist of a deliberate de-emphasis of the ritual and metaphysical elements of the religion, as these elements are seen as incommensurate with the discourses of modernity. Buddhist modernist traditions have also been characterized as being "detraditionalized," often being presented in a way that occludes their historical construction. Instead, Buddhist modernists often employ an essentialized description of their tradition, where key tenets are described as universal and sui generis. It was this form of Zen that has been popularized in the West... In his discussion of humanity and nature, Suzuki takes Zen literature out of its social, ritual, and ethical contexts and reframes it in terms of a language of metaphysics derived from German Romantic idealism, English romanticism, and American transcendentalism."[1]
I don't have any problem with practicing a seculars form of Buddhism. I have a problem with somehow believing that it is the only way to practice Buddhism. Suzuki removed it from its historical and cultural context, but he wouldn't have acted as though the historical and cultural context didn't exist.
> I have a problem with somehow believing that it is the only way to practice Buddhism.
Or, worse, that it's more authentic than any types of Buddhism practiced in areas that have traditional Buddhism. I saw/see this attitude a lot. It just reeks of arrogance and ignorance.
I am very happy to read this. Most people in the west understand Mindfulness in isolation, and often only mindfulness of the breath as meditation. And the intention is to "feel calm" or "not think", or want the Headspace experience on steroids or believe they can brute force their way to "Englightement"...
Without Right View and Right Intention, without the morality development of the Noble Eightfold Path, there is no wonder that they practice unskillfully, and develop unfulfilled expectations.
I highly recommend reading / listening to the talks / going to retreat at (1) for a firm foundation for practice; for more in depth reading from one of the most important Theravadin monks who brings balance to the practice and emphasizes wisdom (2). A nice podcast (3) with also a good balance of teaching.
I hope this helps people better understand meditation / mental development beyond mindfulness and concentration practice.
Americans are in the habit of treating all goals as achievable in a systematic manner and to break down all obstacles into simply more things to learn and apply. With materialistic and worldly goals this works very well.
However by ignoring the soft needs of self in favor of the hard needs of ego, one applies the above methodology right up until their psyche falls apart because there's nothing left holding it together. The ouroboros runs out of tail to eat.
And Buddhist tenets, as understood by Westerners, don't help. Anatta, the doctrine of no-self, does not mean you can just ignore the needs of your psyche! It means your self is illusory, constantly changing. Illusions, have rules! They're durable, they don't just go away because you naively decided they don't matter anymore.
> I interpret the author’s difficulties and frustration as a byproduct of a particular misapprehension of Buddhist teachings in modern society.
I interpret his difficulties as an experience of how the brain is an organ and has physiological responses we’re not often prepared for.
Most people would agree that going on a retreat where you run 20 miles a day would have adverse consequences for your body.
Yet the same kind of workout for your brain doesn’t garner the same respect or caution.
Perhaps the dogma/teachings of Buddhism prepare people for these things better than Western adoption of mediation practices, but to me they don’t get to the heart of the matter, which is true understanding of the brain. Just like kosher practices protected people from disease before the germ theory was understood.
Ultimately until we accept that our brain is a physical organ, that self does not stand apart from body, our mental health as a society is going suffer.
The brain as an organ analogy doesn't also reflect the self-reflective, self-influencing, learning side of it well.
A kidney doesn't remember the last time someone abused it and react reflexively when they see that person. It also doesn't tend to go into tight loops of racing thoughts about that person randomly either.
If you treat it like it is a simple organ (x thing happens, give drug y), it can lead to some really toxic long term effects with avoidance of environmental or self regulatory issues, lack of awareness of what is going on and how to correct it, etc. I've seen it personally, and lost friends and loved ones to the effects a naive 'medical' approach can have.
The reality, near as we can tell, is the brain is an organ, that in ways we don't understand is also part of what we call 'self', which is also part of the system of our body, which is also part of larger systems that we interact with and influence us.
I don't know of any monks that, if you broke a leg, would say 'Meditate and your leg will be healed'. Most monks, if you had not yet gone to a Doctor to have it fixed, would ask you something along the lines of 'How can I help you?' to help you see the need and get you there, or ask you to sit with them so you could see the need yourself.
> The brain as an organ analogy doesn't also reflect the self-reflective, self-influencing, learning side of it well.
Except it’s not an analogy… it’s literally an organ.
Software happens to run on top of it… and when there are bugs in on, we call those functional diseases. But understand that the physical organ and system underlies all if it.
If your cpu or memory are broken.. no software or software fixes can fix that.
And I’m not suggesting that the complexity of the neural network isn’t important to mental health. It is. But it’s based in physical and chemical processes.
Your immune system for instance is a complex system with emergent properties. You could say it “understands” or is aware when the body is being attacked. But at each individual level, it’s a process of chemical physical reactions.
It’s fine to work at the level of the “self”, but if we assume it stands apart or is fundamentally different than the brain itself, that’s when we get into trouble.
Buddhist philosophy can encapsulate accumulated folk knowledge of how the mind works, which can be incredibly insightful. However there’s danger in assuming it explains everything.
It’s truly a singularly unique and poorly understood organ which also is the only known organ trying to understand itself - which is my point. Saying ‘it’s just an organ’ dismisses and minimizes all the important parts.
And the brain, just like many processors CAN and does work around damaged memory, and can and does work around damaged processors/bugs (depending on the nature and severity of them of course). Phineas Gage being one of the clearest recent examples, but there are many more.
Minimizing what is going on to saying ‘it’s all chemical processes’ is really missing the point - it would be like saying a modern CPU is ‘just moving electrons around’. It’s reductio ad absurdum.
I haven’t personally run across a Buddhist philosophy claiming knowledge of the way the brain works. I have run across Buddhist philosophy claiming to know how the universe works, which seemed pretty silly to me. I’ve also run across Buddhist philosophy aiming to provide tools to help people better understand and connect with it and themselves better, which I personally have found helpful.
I pretty much agree with all of this. Buddhism like most things isn’t easily defined as a single set of beliefs for everyone. Lots of Buddhist partake in scientific research in the functioning of the brain. Others, some like the meditation retreat types, focus on pseudoscience and mythology to sell tickets.
Phineas Gage as well as the practice of labotomy definitely shows that the hardware is extremely important. Phineas as well as most lobotomy victims spent the rest of their life as fundamentally different people with enormously different personalities after the damage to their brain. Phineas became extremely volatile and had problems with executive functioning.
> that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining 12 years of his life — effects sufficiently profound that friends saw him (for a time at least) as "no longer Gage"
— from Wikipedia
However your point about healing is well taken. Howard Dully who had a lobotomy performed at the age of 12 has managed to recover to a significant degree as his brain has “re-wired” around the damaged areas. It’s believed his young age allowed for the significant recovery.
All that said, my main point which I feel like you’d agree with is that even if the software and hardware of the mind works around and heals itself, it’s not a metaphysical or supernatural process. Understanding the underlying hardware and chemical process, as well as the emergent processes that allows that healing and work-arounds ultimately leads to greater understanding.
Came here to say something similar. When I was about 20 some close friends of mine started practicing (and eventually ordained) with the American Theravadin monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu, which got my meditation practice started. Unfortunately I made the mistake of doing a lot of sitting and not a lot of learning of the Buddha's teachings at that time, other than reading some Pali translations and listening to Thanissaro Bhikkhu's dharma talks here and there. It got to the place where I didn't have the proper view to make sense of things that were happening and it felt like sitting was making life harder, so I gave up daily practice.
About 10 years later I encountered the Diamond and Heart sutras from the Mahayana traditions and things made a whole lot more sense. It allowed me to get back to daily practice, which I'm very thankful for. It's not a teaching emphasized in the Theravada traditions that many of these American "mindfulness" movements draw from - although it's there - but the teachings on emptiness (śūnyatā) I found to be transformative for my practice. When the author writes things like "...elements of my sense of self became separated in a way that impaired my ability to function", it makes me think he'd benefit from learning the teachings on emptiness and the doctrine of the two truths.
This is all to say that I find it pretty irresponsible and potentially dangerous to have people with very little understanding of the Buddha's teachings get thrown into 10-day silent meditation retreats where you're sitting for 10 hours per day as often seems to happen. Or to divorce the practice of meditation from the teachings as is common in lots of modern western "mindfulness" spaces. Many traditions teach these things slowly, over the course of months and years, while moving you along as your understanding deepens for a reason.
I'd recommend taking your practice slowly, preferably with a skilled Buddhist monk to guide you. Read the sutras. Find a tradition that resonates with you personally. Know that there are risks involved and often times the practice will be difficult and confusing. It's not a magic pill to make you a better worker under capitalism.
Amen (hah) - I doubt (up until recently with these getting more visibility) it was ever a problem enough that retreats are screening for this.
Additionally, retreats taught in 'weight loss' fashion are only going to make this worse, as there may be no one with a comprehensive grounding or experience even present on the retreat.
This is one area where years of experience (and depth) and accuracy/correctness matter a lot. Which is hard. And expensive. And hard to scale.
My teacher was disdainful of the sutras. He would quote from them from time-to-time; but his view was that there is no sutra with a living, breathing lineage. He said there waas no way to check that your understanding of a sutra was correct. He favoured relying on more "modern" texts (i.e. mediaeval!) for which there was a living lineage - at least one living teacher, who could trace his training back to the author of that text.
Trungpa said that the teachings were like bread; they should be consumed fresh and warm.
> as this contradicts the purely empiricist approach of mechanically practicing mindfulness with the expectation that this leads to enlightenment.
This isn't really an empiricist approach. Empiricists look at what works, and (from what you're saying) this doesn't. I'm not sure what to call it, but that's the wrong word.
I'm using the word here to mean a philosophical position which only accepts knowledge that can be gained via direct meditative experience and rejects everything else. I'm open to suggestions for a better word to describe this position.
> I think it can be summarized as "recklessness" (i.e. jumping the gun without proper understanding of/regard to foundational concepts)
Well… I tried to approach it properly. You google or look up in wikipedia a bunch of info on Buddhism, then you find most popular authors writing on the topic. You end up with “Zen mind, beginner’s mind” and a few others. None of them tell you it may hurt you, none of them mention doing it on group settings or with teachers, they recommend you starting alone and doing it daily. One of those foundational books (don’t remember which one), recommended doing an hour a day… How is one supposed to know that it is dangerous?
> How is one supposed to know that it is dangerous?
It isn't supposed to be dangerous, but if you dive head first into hardcore "retreats" with unrealistic expectations, that might end up badly, yes.
For starters, if you have to seek recommendations on the Internet, you're probably already several steps detached from the original tradition. Buddhism has an insane amount of breadth: there are west asian flavors and east asian flavors, and there's literally thousands of years of history to go with them. Some forms of practice don't even focus on meditation (for example, as a child, I was largely exposed to ritualistic aspects of the japanese flavor). If you're interested in it as a westerner, it's likely because you've heard of mindfulness in the context of mental health benefits, but that's in large part a western concept bolted on top of the original tradition.
It would be helpful to try to understand where stuff is getting lost in translation. Learning more about the original Buddhist philosophy and its roots can help give more context on things like what enlightenment is supposed to be about (coming to understand what it is is actually kind of the point) and how meditation and mindfulness are supposed to fit in.
In general, one key tenet you will find even in those books is a focus on 'being' and 'experiencing' reality over taking as truth an abstract knowledge of how something 'should be'.
An approach that might work better could be a gradual and expanding exposure, talking physically in person to others, and exposing oneself physically to the practices and reality of a number of different sects and groups over time - while evolving your own understanding with book reading. It is very unlikely that meditating, or following basic practices, is going to cause anyone harm - but definitely not impossible based on their state of mind or circumstances. Given a large enough group trying something, it is inevitable someone will have a terrible outcome. It doesn't mean others won't have amazing outcomes, however.
It is our own individual responsibility to take ownership for making the decisions we make, taking the path we take, and owning the results, or we lose all handle on the little we can actually control and become even more lost.
Going to a meditation retreat (12+ hrs) without a solid grounding and understanding of the context would be a bit like hopping on a race motorcycle on a track day right after getting a learners permit - ill advised, and unlikely to result in anything healthy. Not impossible it wouldn't go well however, and not something likely to need screening for from the retreat (or track) side. Usually most people would realize pretty quickly even if they were dumb enough to get started and quit before anything really terrible happened.
If someone doesn't know or recognize that, they are unlikely to find the right ways to get in trouble - usually.
Book knowledge can help expand or refine knowledge, but should always be validated and integrated with personal experience. There are too many conflicting ways to take a specific passage, too many personal traumas or gotchas, too many environmental variables for anything else frankly.
It should not be your only or especially your only foundational knowledge about something so fundamental as how to understand or approach reality and yourself.
Maybe getting your only information from a cursory grazing of wikipedia isn't approaching the topic properly?
The article in question isn't about meditating once a day. It's about meditating aggressively for TWELVE hours a day two weeks straight, and how it negatively affected the author.
In this sense, this person is talking about empiricism as the outlook that only what can be measured matters. Hours spent in meditation can be measured, but your embodiment of right view can't (or isn't, at least).
The author wasn't ignorant: "I’m extremely knowledgeable of both Buddhist and secular frameworks of meditation, have read countless books on the subject."
The author obviously isn't ignorant. The comment you failed to respond to directly is talking about "a particular misapprehension of Buddhist teachings in modern society."
This is not about ignorance, and framing it as such is directly supporting the thesis of the original article.
Misapprehension is a function of ignorance. If you're free of trapped priors, you'll eventually sort out your misconceptions, as you learn more.
Regarding this particular slice of turkey on the table, since you insist: "[T]his is a misunderstanding that the Buddha himself addressed in the teachings."
The teachings? The teachings a person would likely be exposed to and eventually come up understand, if they've read countless books on the non-secular/Buddhist practice of meditation?
Regardless, if failing to "correctly" understand a bit of squishy woo-woo in Buddhist religion is the difference between safe meditation practice and psychosis/nervous breakdown, then that's all the more alarming.
The author was not ignorant. He was also nowhere near close to any sort of enlightment, or else he would not have thought things like that.
This is, however, a moot point. The article is important and a warning to a lot of people. The current state we live creates such a tense situation for most people that these hardcore retreat-size meditation doses can literally act like shocks to both the trained and the untrained.
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Email: sam [at] jayasinghe [dot] io
Generalist software engineer with a broad range of experience including frontend, backend, and cloud infrastructure development. Past roles include full stack engineering at a YC-backed startup and VP of Engineering at a quantitative hedge fund.
What sets me apart? I have entrepreneurship experience that gives me an understanding of the end-to-end product development process at early stage startups. I am skilled at taking initiative on projects and turning vaguely defined requirements into concrete solutions. I am passionate about functional programming, engineering reliable and scalable software systems, and building engineering teams that consistently deliver quality results. I also speak 3 languages fluently (English, Sinhala, and Mandarin Chinese).
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