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community weblog

That's called cultural appropriation

Vincent Horn described the a recent episode of Buddhist Geeks as a departure for the podcast. He explained he would be monologuing to explain the Jhāna Drama.
What follows is a fascinating critique of the start-up Jhourney which plans to help practitioners enter a blissful meditative state rapidly and repeatedly through biofeedback. However, as Ross Anderson in the Atlantic Reports, experienced meditators are skeptical. Horns critique, based on his experience consulting during a Jhorney retreat, include but goes beyond skepticism, exploring issues of trauma induced during mediation retreats, cultural appropriation, and the corporatization of Buddhism. He also uses it as an opportunity to promote his own Jhana community, seemingly made in response to his experience at Jhourney.
posted by CMcG on Jul 01, 2024 at 11:26 AM

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the company's algorithm has not been able to achieve enough precision at classifying neurological states
"hardcore" dharma [stackexchange]
posted by HearHere at 11:32 AM

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Man. It seems like if you can in fact just sell people this spiritual state like it's soylent, that pretty much undercuts any kind of spiritual meaning in the universe whatsoever. Truly a "buying a stairway to heaven" deal. Bleak.
posted by Frowner at 11:49 AM

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It seems like if you can in fact just sell people this spiritual state like it's soylent, that pretty much undercuts any kind of spiritual meaning in the universe whatsoever.

Suffering is better?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:40 PM

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...it usually takes him multiple days of meditation at a retreat before he enters one. The idea that someone could get there every morning in the time it takes to watch two episodes of Bluey struck him as unusual.


Has this person ever seen a toddler watch Bluey? It's not unusual; it's guaranteed.
posted by phooky at 1:00 PM

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Suffering is
a noble truth [wiki]
posted by HearHere at 1:04 PM

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Meditation techniques are spiritual technologies, designed to be used within specific faith traditions for specific purposes. Blissful feelings, reduced stress, whatever are side effects, and a meditation practice can be dangerous without guidance — people do suffer negative psychological effects at meditation retreats — part of the role of teachers and a community is to ease those experiences and focus students on positive outcomes.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:10 PM

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GenjiandProust, this is the persuasive case that Vincent Horn makes (alongside other points I found to be persuasive). I think you would enjoy the podcast. I learned about lineage teachers, which I was not aware of, and it really made me think.
posted by CMcG at 1:53 PM

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Unlike the corporatization of the various Christian sects, the corporatization of Buddhism is a bad idea. Okay, maybe it's just an idea.

I can't wait to plug in and take the stairway to Oblivian.
posted by mule98J at 1:56 PM

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Suffering is a noble truth

Well, it *was*.

Although frankly there have always been drugs that regularly induce deep spiritual experiences. This just seems like a different hack.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:59 PM

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Concurring with GenjiAndProust here. Meditation is, among other things, a set of technologies for hacking your own brain. "Chapel Perilous", "the dark night of the soul", lots of other terminology exists for what happens when untrained and unguided people access these technologies beyond their current skill level. You can easily end up in a very bad mental state—and if you're doing the thing alone in your house with no training and no guide except a biofeedback headset, how will you get out of it? You won't even know what kind of help to ask for!
posted by adrienneleigh at 5:13 PM

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Thanks for posting I look forward to listening. I'm a long time meditator and I've used the muse headset + neurofeedback to help with flow. Flow is great! It really helped me let go and flow just that little bit more. I don't use it much these days though.

The meditative tradition is to use flow state + concentration to then examine our base assumptions about self and reality. Even if the user stops at flow it's still very helpful for developing presence. In this day and age and all.

As for Jhana. Those are particular states of concentration. Sometimes people fetishize them (actually they fetishize them a LOT) but insights can happen without that level of concentration; that is more Mahahamudra / Tibetan style. Unfortunately Tibetan style is largely ignored by these kinds of companies because Tibetan = Religious and the west doesn't care for that very much. It's like they're allergic to guru / lineage. Myself I am Tibetan.

I am kind of agnostic about all this tech. Some people aren't motivated to go all the way to insight and who should make them try? I might give this a try for Jhana purposes since it's not my forte as a meditator and I could sure use the boost. My only concern is if you use a tool you skip over the learnings of how your mind actually works by working it out for yourself - a lot of the insight is learned by the very act of trying to focus the mind. So what if you get to jhana if you have no idea how you got there and didn't learn anything along them way - just take some mushrooms ! (And adhd meds?)

Also the purpose of meditation isn't to feel good. That's often but not always a byproduct. The purpose of meditation is to quiet the mind enough to observe it and learn what we really are.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:27 PM

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When I asked Zerfas if Jhourney has a full-time EEG scientist on staff, he said no, but added that he'd "read a bunch of textbooks," and taught himself with the help of a tutor. The current state of EEG research coming out of academia underwhelmed him, he said.

Ahhh, there it is. The Elizabeth Holmes syndrome. "I, the tech god, surely can do more after reading just a couple books than the legions of scientists who have been doing actual work on this for however many decades. Now gimme that sweet VC cash...."
posted by dnash at 7:53 AM

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Hey, Elizabeth Holmes did really well up to the "prosecuted for fraud" part. Although her mistake was to commit fraud against large companies.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:17 PM

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Ok I finally had some time to RTFA and can't stand this guy.

I have personally found neurofeedback very helpful for my meditation practice (and I have a number of meditation geek friends who also have used it!) but this dude had one big blissful experience and now is combining the worst impulses of proselytizing and monetizing. its not about state chasing! Jhanas may be blissful but they're not it - the Buddha learned Jhanas from the meditators of the time and saw that they faded and did not produce the lasting change he sought. The actual solution was to use the concentrated mind (developed through jhana practice) to investigate itself.

And the arrogance is grating at me. Better minds than him are at work studying brain neuro correlates with advanced meditators and he thinks he's just gonna machine learn it. Not a neurologist on staff. Yuk.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:33 PM

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NPR did a fascinating podcast expose of the Goenka retreats he mentions. They discuss some of the cases of deep mental health problem induced by the retreats and show how a combination of lack of mental health expertise and support on site prevented people from getting help when they were in crisis. And how some of those people ended up going back for more again and again because, well, people often very understandably have trouble telling good pain from bad pain in a treatment context, and without expert guidance can go down rabbit holes that exacerbate their problem.
posted by antinomia at 3:37 AM

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