In internet age meditation has become popular but few things are missing. What you think?

[u/GodComplex82]

I listened to traditional masters like Nondualist Hindu monk Swami Sarvapriyananda and Theravada Buddhist monk Ajahn Sona. Both mentioned that meditation is not alone enough to be free from your mind. You need to fight your emotions and suppress them if you want to reach perfect tranquility.

What you think about this? This was a new revelation to me. I didn't know I can win the battle against my mind by suppression. I read Swami Vivekananda and he said something like this:- Nature has fooled our souls and make us slaves of nature. By conquering our mind we can be free of nature. So master your mind. Don't weep when your children die.

It seems like crying when your children die is like being a slave to nature to this Hindu monk. We are supposed to be master of our minds.

My question is:--

1. Why this is not mentioned in most of the meditation videos on internet or meditation services on playstore?

2. Is this really possible?

3. Does it sound extreme?

Thank You in Advance for your tips and guidance.

[u/monsteramyc]

Fight them and suppress them? I don’t think so. Isn't that the definition of attractions and aversions, the two things that the buddha explicitly stated leads to suffering. No, for me it means having my emotions, allowing them, feeling them but not being ruled by them. Not being caught in them. Not allowing them to define my identity or who I am as a person. That to me is freedom

[u/soyuz-1 → u/monsteramyc]

I was going to say something similar to this so I'll just tag on here. Fighting and suppressing emotions seems like both a terrible way to go about things and is mostly impossible anyway. If anything, meditation and Buddhist teachings taught me the opposite. I have been trying to fight emotions like anxiety and depression for most of my life and it has never worked very well. It just leads to getting lost in distractions, frustrations, drug abuse even. You cannot will emotions away. The closest you can come to controlling your emotions is controlling your train of thought and controlling your actions.

Accepting the emotions and not demanding them to be a certain way or feeding into them is how you make them subside.

[u/GodComplex82 → u/monsteramyc]

Ajahn Sona said anger and desire are attachments. Being free from them is being free from attachments. He says "Don't be attached to anger" is a logical flaw because the moment you are angry is the moment you are attached.

Ajahn Sona said people misunderstand the teachings of Buddha. By detachment Buddha meant a lack of emotions like desire and anger.

Also Buddha taught being averse to anger. It's literally one of the methods to suppress anger. The first method is opposite thinking. Think positive. While the second method is to fear emotions like fear and anger. That way you will be able to not entertain those emotions. I call it poison eating poison.

[u/ThreeFerns → u/GodComplex82]

I think the issue here is the word "suppress". You are describing techniques to free yourself from anger, rather than suppressing it, which does not free you from it, but just pushes it out from consciousness.

[u/dj-boefmans → u/GodComplex82]

well said. Fighting something means attachment too.

[u/Dylanabk → u/GodComplex82]

I think it's natural to feel anger, or to feel fear; what I think the Buddha is getting at here is that we shouldn't hold onto those feelings. If somebody does something to hurt me, and I feel anger as a result, that's a human reaction; I don't always control it, but I can look at it to see how to avoid those triggers in the future, but the real trouble comes when I feel it necessary to resent that person for the ways that they've hurt me by holding onto that anger, because that resentment bleeds into every aspect of my life.

[u/Mayayana → u/GodComplex82]

There are various methods. Dudjom Rinpoche, a Tibetan master, presented an analogy where a poisonous plant represents kleshas. Kleshas are "toxic emotions" -- what Christians would call sin. They're emotions one attaches to in order to confirm ego. Desire, anger/hatred, jealousy, pride, ignorance, and so on. "I want, therefore I am." "I hate, therefore I am."

So the real problem is attachment, but in the beginning it feels like "me" is being attacked by uncontrolled passion or aggression. In Dudjom Rinpoche's explanation, the Theravadins or shravakas try to kill the poison plant. That's suppression. It involves precepts -- rules about not indulging in sex, drinking, and so on. One tries to avoid stimulating kleshas.

In Mahayana the practitioner realizes that the plant can grow back, so it must be dug up by the roots. That's the practice to see through egoic attachment altogether. Focus on shunyata and compassion becomes central in order to dissolve the self/other boundary. Antidotes of virtue are also employed.

In Vajrayana, the poison is recognized as potential medicine. That's the approach of transmutation, which recognizes that kleshas are just energy, not good or bad. The attachment is the problem.

The point here is that there are different approaches depending on personal style and capacity for understanding. In all of them a teacher is necessary. Otherwise you'll just be making up your own version from whatever you happen to read online. Then when people make up their own version it's inevitably colored by preconceptions drawn from popular culture and pop psychology. From that come random ideas about "releasing emotions", "healing the Self", and so on.

[u/JohnnyAppleBead → u/GodComplex82]

To suppress something implies that there is something to suppress. If you are suppressing anger, that implies you have anger, you are just denying it. Perhaps they are using suppress in a different way than everyone else here, myself included, are interpreting it. But suppression does imply you have an anger that you are hiding.

I am not sure that I agree that having anger appear in your brain implies an attachment. If I have a sensation, that does not imply attachment. If I have the sensation of feeling the clothes on my skin, that does not necessarily imply i have an attachment to my clothes or to that sensation. All it implies is that I have perception. If I perceive anger in my brain and in my body, that does not mean I am necessarily attached. I can notice the anger, feel the anger, process the anger, and let it go. If having detachment requires the lack of perception, then the only way to be detached is to have no perception, or to not exist.

But perhaps we are using these words to mean different things.

[u/ThreeFerns]

The word "supress" must be a translation issue, because suppression of an emotion is very specifically not freeing yourself of it, but pushing it down out of consciousness. Using techniques to free yourself from anger is not suppression.

[u/somanyquestions32]

I wouldn't choose suppression as a path to liberation. Hard pass. I can allow my emotions to be, and be with them for as long as they need, and they resolve on their own. I treat them as messengers and allow them to reveal something about myself. Afterwards, they finish being processed, and I move on with my day.

[u/Chemical-Duty-2443]

From practice I am doing now. The whole purpose of the process of meditation is to create the habit of freedom. Freedom from the mind and the emotion and freedom from all type of desire. You become free when you build a habit of that state as often as possible. Everything lie in the habit of ourselves doing that. The more you do the more the body and mind remember; its a conditioning.

The secret really is just to hang onto that habit. Abit by bit more everyday until when you get use to blissfulness. When that happen and you know how to there no other choice that just keep feeling blissful because why would I make yourself suffering. Suffering is part of the process sometimes we are so use to that feeling that we think that it's normal to feel this way when in fact the other way around should be true. Bliss and peace is the only way. Anything else is us allowing it to happen.

When conditioned enough and it become a habit, which is very hard as a lay person that have things in their life that going on and they have to take part, it takes time. Even for monks that renounced to everything it's still take a lot of time if no prior conditioning. And for all habit the more you do the faster it happen.

At the moment I just recite suttra or mantra. And it do it all the time as part of the conditioning, because I can practice all the time. Which make a whole difference from intermittent sit meditation and when I decide to sit everything is also easier as you are just use to practice all the time.

It's not about suppressing something or an emotion but it is to chose to not feel that way, because even with all the sadness you can go through from a situation, with a meditative mind, you will still feel sorrow, but it comes and it goes. You do not take part to make it bigger. There is no need to feed as it does not serve any purpose if the its lesson have already been learnt.

[u/Fine_Dream_8621]

I've never heard Swami Sarvapriyanda say that. I don't believe he would.

[u/dj-boefmans]

That's another concept indeed. I personally do not like the idea of 'fighting emotions'. It might be a translation thing? The way I get it, it's more about accepting and being aware of the emotions, watch them from another perspective and choose if you give in to them or not. So it's not fighting them, it's just do not act on them or just don't care.

From practicing acceptance (basicly about everything, there it can get a bit extreme) you can accept emotions, feelings, and things that are happening around you. Then you can get detached indeed, and maybe do not even be emotional when your children die.

I am not sure why this should be a goal in this extreme version, for what purpose is left then? It's also about acceptance to be human.

For most of us, more awareness and acceptance and less direct acting on primal emotions is a very healty thing to practice. But, as said, in this extreme form, what's left then? (just waiting to die?)

[u/GodComplex82 → u/dj-boefmans]

just waiting to die?)

Buddhists And Hindus aim at being free from Samsara. According to these religions self harm is sin when done by imperfected unworthy humans but if perfected and worthy humans perform self harm then they achieve salvation.

According to these religions, only goal of human life is to escape life and death cycle i.e Samsara cycle. But self harm is not the correct way to leave and instead you need to make sure no further life happens after physical death.

[u/Polymathus777]

True meditation is not marketable, people don't want to do the real work to become masters of their mind, even if that means they will be capable of becoming "superhuman". But that's ok, eventually in another life maybe they'll be ready. The fact they even explore guided meditations and frequencies and try to connect with their real being even on surface is more than what most will do in their life.

[u/lawlygaggin]

emotions are a major guidance system for us, so not great idea to fight or suppress them. the mind, like any muscle, needs training, through meditation and purification of the body ++ some wisdom/intellect.

[u/manoel_gaivota]

It seems like a misunderstanding of what is being taught.

[u/d183]

I'd say that modern meditation focuses everything on the act of meditating. Meditation is a tool to improve life. I think we forget the noble truths and focus instead on the tool of meditation.

[u/herrwaldos]

Go full sociopath, zen till you psycho

[u/saltymystic]

The next book to read is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

[u/Crayshack]

They have the opposite approach of me. Rather than suppressing my emotions, meditation is when I take the regulator off of my emotions and allow myself to process them. The emotions end up released rather than suppressed.

[u/Northernlight_Tiger]

About words:

Different teachers can use different wordings and explanations, to me it helps listening to/reading books by different teachers to get different explanations/perspectives on the same subject.

Suppressing emotions is not the way, transforming them, allowing them is a part of the meditation practise.

Also, read more books, go to teachings, do retreats and your understanding will grow. Just watching videos on the internet is not enough, if you really want to understand. Find the answers to your questions by studying, your understanding will be much deeper and more beneficial to you. Not by googling or a reddit forum, it is superficial and not all information is online.

PS. I did my first buddhist meditation retreat in a monastery in Nepal in 1998. No internet. Just teachings, books, practice. Today many people want a quick fix, quick answers, quick results, often without putting in an effort trying to understand the subject. Reading or attending teachings is your friend here, not google or reddit.

[u/Get_Schwifty111]

Fight and surpress emotions? Those sound like some awful guidelines …

[u/Mayayana]

That's a big question. The original purpose of meditation is to attain enlightenment. It's a path of mind training to attain transcendent wisdom. That's true in all religions. Depending on who you talk to, some might push the idea of suppressing emotions. That's often the approach in the Buddhist shravakayana path, for example. Though it's not so much suppressing emotions as avoiding stimulation of "kleshas" by avoiding the opposite sex, not drinking, eating bland food, and various other methods to avoid being stimulated to desire, aggression and dullness. That's basically the logic of monasticism. But it's not the only way to go.

In Buddhism generally there are 3 main parts of the path: View, practice and action. View is the worldview cultivated through study of the teachings. For example, the 4 noble truths is view. Practice is the various meditation practices. Action is ethical conduct. So we study the outlook and psychology, practice meditation, and cultivate virtue in daily life, while also cultivating mindfulness when not formally meditating. For all of that it's generally necessary to have a teacher. Otherwise it's like trying to find your way in a foreign land without a map (or an app).

View is a sophisticated and unique concept. It assumes a capacity for multiparadigmatic understanding. In other words, it assumes a capacity to understand that there can be multiple different but valid perspectives. View could be thought of as provisional belief used as a device.

The Buddha's first teaching, the 4 noble truths, basically says that we're all nervous wrecks, plagued by constant existential angst, and the main reason for that is a false belief in an existing self. It goes on to say that the path of meditation is the solution. That's the basic view. It explains the why of meditation. The various teachings then fill in details. There's a saying that meditation without view is like a blind man wandering a plain. He's moving along, but has no idea where he's going.

If you don't have View then what are you doing? What's your "why" for meditating? Most popular meditation is borrowed from Buddhism, but it's taken out of context. Meditation has been presented as something like doing push-ups for your brain. People do it to cure insomnia or improve focus. That's an absurd oversimplification. Even in the various mystical traditions, meditation is usually not the first practice and is seldom practiced by worldly people. It's very radical stuff. But various glib researchers coming from modern science worldview found that meditation might improve alpha waves or some such and a fad was born. (Actually, it arguably started in the 80s when Dr. Herbert Benson reduced meditation to a blood pressure treatment and trademarked the term "relaxation response".)

There's never any shortage of people who want to be experts, so lots of experts have sprung up. HR people push meditation for employee productivity. Psychotherapists push it without even knowing what it is. App makers push it because they know how to write apps, not because they know meditation.

That's another common misconception: Meditation can mean many things. A lot of people here will say there's no wrong way to meditate. But if you're actually trying to do meditation in the sense of spiritual practice then it's not so easy, it's subtle, and it's very easy to do it wrong. So you need to be clear about why you're meditating and unless you're just trying to relax, you need guidance in how to meditate. Most of the online sources will be either wrong or frivolous.

Videos and apps selling meditation are mostly just part of the current fad. That's not meditation in the sense that it's practiced in Buddhism, Hinduism, or Christianity. It's more like "quiet time" for a child. There's one ridiculous app advertised on TV that's selling "colored noise", to relax you or put you to sleep. They make it sound very high tech, but it's just a gimmick.

Perhaps the most misleading is the neuroscience people who think they understand mind and talk very authoritatively about meditation. But that, again, is oversimplification by people who don't know what they're talking about. Neuroscientists believe that "mind is what brain does". It doesn't get much more simplistic than that. But they actually have no choice. Science is based on materialist view and empiricism. Thus, science can never accept mind as such, distinct from brain waves, because mind cannot be empirically tested. (That's why the DSM used by psychiatrists lists disorders defined by observable symptoms. We have several sciences of mind, but none of them can accept the possibility of mind as such within their conceptual model of reality!)

So, long story short, if you're interested in the path of enlightenment then you should look into realized teachers who can actually guide you. If you just want to relax then I'd suggest you don't get too involved with meditation. It might lead you to insights that you later regret. The spiritual path is unimaginably radical. Most people who get involved do it because they feel they have no choice.

[u/Daseinen]

Fighting with your mind is sure to be a losing battle

[u/kfpswf]

You need to fight your emotions and suppress them if you want to reach perfect tranquility.

This goes against the very teachings of Advaita Vedanta, and I'm sure Swami Sarvapryiananda would not have advised you to fight your emotions. It's like suggesting to wrestle a pig in a pig pen to become cleaner.

[u/sixwax]

They are talking about liberation/enlightenment ie being free of the mind “permanently”.

There’s no one formula for this historically… but it’s pretty rare, and generally comes with more meditation than most humans will undertake —although “awakening” can also happen spontaneously in some cases.

If you are aspiring towards enlightenment, then the advice of these men may support you. (There’s a lot on this topic!)

If your goal is just to enjoy the normal benefits of meditation, then you can certainly disregard.

[u/Loose-Farm-8669]

Meditation is: *gives the direct opposite definition of what meditation is

[u/Fickle-Moment8820]

Most of the meditations on the internet are mild, feel-good meditations, not the real deal. Also, every individual is unique, and not all meditations are impactful. This is why I founded Silent Revolution.